Clotilda (slave ship)

Captain William Foster was captain of the schooner Clotilda, working for Timothy Meaher, a wealthy Mobile shipyard owner and steamboat captain. In 1855 or 1856, Meaher had learned that West African tribes were at war and that the King of Dahomey (now Benin) was willing to sell enemy prisoners as slaves. Dahomey's forces had been raiding communities in the interior, bringing captives to the large slave market at the port of Ouidah. arriving in Whydah on May 15, 1860, Research in the 21st century suggests that they were actually Takpa or Tapa people, the northern Yoruba name for the neighboring Nupe people from the interior of present-day Nigeria. He described meeting an African prince and being taken to the king's court, where he observed some religious practices. Foster wrote in his journal in 1860, "Having agreeably transacted affairs with the Prince we went to the warehouse where they had in confinement four thousand captives in a state of nudity from which they gave me liberty to select one hundred and twenty-five as mine offering to brand them for me, from which I preemptorily [sic] forbid; commenced taking on cargo of negroes, successfully securing on board one hundred and ten." Several visible wrecks have been referred to by locals as the slave ship. Wreckage from Clotilda was allegedly found in 2018, but the Alabama Historical Commission ruled out the findings because of "major differences between the two vessels," and apparent lack of any fire damage. Africatown The Africans of the Clotilda were effectively emancipated at the end of the Civil War. As did many freedmen, Redoshi and William stayed with their daughter at the plantation in Bogue Chitto and continued to work there. But in 2020 it was announced that Matilda McCrear had survived until 1940, when she died in Selma, Alabama. The community of Africatown grew to 12,000 as new industry attracted workers to the upper river, including paper mills built after World War II. But with closing industries and job losses, the population has declined to about 2,000 in the early twenty-first century. In the postwar period, the area was mostly absorbed into a neighborhood of Mobile, with part in the neighboring town of Prichard. In 2012 the Africatown Historic District was recognized and listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Their cemetery is also listed. == Finding the wreck ==

In January 2018, reporter Ben Raines identified what was originally believed to be the wreckage of the Clotilda in the lower Mobile–Tensaw Delta, a few miles north of the city of Mobile. Record low tides, caused by a storm system that produced a blizzard, had left parts of a wreck visible above the mud. People in Africatown began to discuss what should be done with the wreckage if it was the Clotilda, and how best to tell their story. However, by March 2018, researchers determined that the wreckage discovered by Raines was not Clotilda. The National Park Service did designate the wreck that Raines discovered (of a ship almost twice as large as the Clotilda) as the Twelvemile Island Ship Graveyard Historical and Archaeological District. A few weeks later, Raines and a team from the University of Southern Mississippi returned to the river and performed the first survey of the 12 Mile Island section of the Mobile River. A week later, Raines and Monty Graham, head of Marine Sciences at the University of Southern Mississippi, explored several of the 11 wrecks identified in the survey, along with Joe Turner and a team from Underwater Works Dive Shop. On April 13, Ben Raines pulled up the first piece of Clotilda to see the light of day in 160 years. The coordinates and survey data were shared with the Alabama Historical Commission, which hired Search Inc., to verify the find. The discovery was kept secret for a year, until the verification process was complete. On May 22, 2019, the Alabama Historical Commission announced that the wreckage of the Clotilda had been found. ==Representation in media==

The Clotilda has been frequently portrayed in the media. Margaret Brown's 2008 documentary film The Order of Myths revealed that the queens of the two major, segregated Mardi Gras organizations in 2007 had a poignant link: the ancestors of the MCA queen had smuggled the ancestors of the MAMGA queen into Mobile Bay as slaves on the Clotilda. Brown followed up in 2022 with Descendant, a documentary film that looks into the Africatown community today, including the environmental and societal inequities still present after 160 years, and the impact the Clotilda's 2019 discovery had on the area. Produced by Netflix, it premiered at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival. The song "Clotilda's on Fire," on Shemekia Copeland's 2020 album Uncivil War, deals with the vessel and her human cargo. ==See also==