The Last Known Slave Ship Has Been Found

Over the years, the hunt for the remains of the last ship known to have brought enslaved people into the United States has been fraught with a mix of tumult and hope. Hopes were raised, then dashed, then raised again — not only among marine archaeologists, but also among the descendants of the ship’s human cargo, many of whom make their homes in a tiny South Alabama community called Africatown. Then, on Wednesday, came an announcement from the Alabama Historical Commission: Another shipwreck, one of many marooned under a muddy stretch of the Mobile River, was almost certainly the Clotilda, a wooden vessel of horrors that carried 110 Africans to the United States in 1860, more than a half-century after the importation of slaves was declared illegal.

Source: www.nytimes.com