Clotilda: The last known slave ship arrives in Alabama

In 1860, Timothy Meaher with Captain William Foster illegally carried over a hundred enslaved Africans on the Clotilda then wrecked and abandoned the ship to conceal their trip. The slave trade was made illegal back in 1808, but many slave owners in the South like Meaher continued it for years. After the Civil War, Africans brought on Meaher's covert trip would go on to found Africatown, Alabama, where many of their descendants still live today. Remains of the Clotilda were found in Alabama's Mobile River in 2019.