The schooner Clotilda (often misspelled Clotilde) was the last known U.S. slave ship to bring captives from Africa to the United States, arriving at Mobile Bay, in autumn 1859[1] or on July 9, 1860,[2][3] with 110 African men, women, and children.

After the Civil War, Oluale Kossola[1] and thirty-one other formerly enslaved people founded Africatown on the north side of Mobile, Alabama.

[12][14] Meaher was said to have wagered another wealthy gentleman from New Orleans,[citation needed] that he could successfully smuggle Africans into the US despite the 1807 Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves.

Departing on March 4, 1860, Foster sailed from Mobile with a crew of 12, including himself,[11] arriving in Whydah on May 15, 1860,[11] where he had the ship outfitted to carry Africans, using materials he had transported.

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.

They saw a man o' war during the ocean passage, but escaped notice when a squall came up and they outran the ship,[11] reaching Abaco lighthouse at the Bahama banks by June 30.

[12] As they neared the United States, they disguised the schooner by taking down the "squaresail yards and the fore topmast", hoping to pass as a "coaster" carrying African captives within the US in the domestic coastal trade.

[1] Some of the captives were sold farther away, including Redoshi (later known also as Sally Smith) and a man later known as William or Billy, whom she was forced to marry on board the ship.

[5] In 1861, the federal government prosecuted Meaher and Foster in Mobile for illegal slave importation, but the case was dismissed for lack of evidence from the ship or its manifest, and perhaps because of the outbreak of the Civil War.

Because Captain Foster reported he burned and sank Clotilda[2] in the delta north of Mobile Bay, archaeological searches have continued into the 21st century for the wreck.

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.

[17] In May 2019, the Alabama Historical Commission announced the wreck had finally been found by researcher Ben Raines, showing "physical and forensic evidence [that] powerfully suggests that this is the Clotilda.

[6] 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.

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.

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.