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LATE-BREAKING NEWS AND NOTES FROM THE WORLD OF ARCHAEOLOGY
A
shipwreck designated
archaeological site
1 Ba 704 should, say
archaeologists, also be called
Clotilda, one of the most
notorious vessels in U.S. hisĥ
tory. The path to identifying
the wreck as the last ship to
carry enslaved Africans to the
United States has been chalĥ
lenging. And it began with
the wrong wreck.
In 1855 , William Foster,
a shipbuilder and businessĥ
man born in Nova Scotia
and trained in the shipyards
of the northeast, traveled
south to Mobile, Alabama,
where he built the schooner
Clotilda 2Q WKH ¿UVW RI KHU
40 commercial voyages, she
sailed to Havana from Mobile
with unknown cargo. On her
last, in 1860 , she traveled
to Mobile from Ouidah in the West African Kingdom of
Dahomey, carrying 110 Africans destined for the slave marĥ
kets of New Orleans. By then, it had been illegal to import
slaves into the United States for more than 50 years.
7KH86JRYHUQPHQW¿UVWVHDUFKHGIRUClotilda shortly after
learning of her illicit voyage, but the endeavor proved fruitĥ
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the vessel since then, but it was not until January 2018 , when a
ship in the Mobile River designated archaeological site 1 Ba 694
ZDV VSHFXODWLYHO\ LGHQWL¿HG DVClotilda, that archaeological
investigation began. “It didn’t appear to me from the news
photos and from the size of the wreck revealed by Google
Earth to be a close match to what we know of Clotilda,” says
maritime archaeologist James Delgado of the archaeology
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6($5&+DUFKDHRORJLVWVVRRQUHYHDOHGWKDW 1 Ba 694 was built
LQWKHODWHQLQHWHHQWKRUHDUO\WZHQWLHWKFHQWXU\RQWKH3DFL¿F&RDVWDQGZDV 183 feet long, far too large to be Clotilda. From
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records, and insurance documents, Clotilda was known to have
been less than half that size.
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Clotilda6($5&+LQFRRSHUDWLRQZLWKWKH$ODEDPD+LVWRULĥ
FDO &RPPLVVLRQ LGHQWL¿HG 14 potential targets for further
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archaeologically surveyed. “Our priority was to focus our
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Clotilda ́'HOJDGRVD\V³$W¿UVWWKHUHZHUHIRXUFDQGLGDWHV
WKHQWZRDQGWKHQMXVWRQH ́
After concluding that 1 Ba 704 was the most likely canĥ
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of the question due to its potential to disturb the wreck.
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gathered rusty iron nails, and measured the portion of theTHE CASE FOR CLOTILDA
archaeology.org 9
Side-scan sonar image of archaeological site 1Ba704, the wreck of Clotilda.
The dotted lines show the ship’s stern and full projected length.