Clotilda

"The book documents the maritime history and the 2018/2019 archaeological fieldwork and laboratory and historical research to identify the wreck of notorious schooner Clotilda in Mobile Bay. Clotilda was owned by Alabama businessman Thomas Meaher, who, on a dare, equipped it to carry captured Africans from what is now Benin and bring them to Alabama in 1860, some fifty years after the import of the enslaved was banned. The boat carried perhaps 110 Africans, and, on approaching Mobile Bay, the captives were unloaded and dispersed by river steamer/s to plantations upriver. To hide the evidence, Clotilda was set afire and sunk. Apparently, the site of the wreck was an open secret but lost from memory for a time. Various surveys through the years failed to locate the ship. In 2018, Al.com reporter Ben Raines identified a shipwreck near Twelvemile Island, and the story attracted international attention. Researcher partners, including Delgado and coauthors in the crew, determined that this was not the Clotilda. In 2019, on another investigative mission to locate the Clotilda, Delgado and crew compared the remains of a schooner and determined that it was the Clotilda. The Alabama Historical Commission and the descendent community of Africatown, where survivors of the Clotilda made their lives post-Emancipation, are making plans for commemoration of the site and the remains of the ship, if it is possible to salvage and preserve out of water. The book takes two tacks. First it serves as a nautical biography of Clotilda. After reviewing the maritime trade in and out of Mobile Bay, it places the Clotilda within the larger landscape of American and Gulf of Mexico schooners and covers its career before being used as a slave ship. Delgado et al. reconstruct Clotilda's likely appearance and characteristics. The second tack is the archaeological assessment of the wreck. The book also places the wreck within the context of a ship's graveyard in a "back water" of the Mobile River. Delgado et al. discuss the various searches for Clotilda. Detailing of the forensic and other analyses shows how those involved concluded that this wreck was indeed the Clotilda"--

James P. Delgado is the senior vice president of SEARCH Inc., the largest cultural resource management firm in the United States, and adjunct professor of archaeology at Simon Fraser University. Winner of multiple awards for his maritime archaeological missions, Delgado is also a prolific, award-winning author. His recent books include War at Sea: A Shipwrecked History from Antiquity to the Twentieth Century and the coauthored The Lost Submarines of Pearl Harbor and The Maritime Landscape of the Isthmus of Panamá.

Deborah E. Marx is a maritime archaeologist specializing in the maritime cultural landscape of the California lumber industry and nineteenth-century ship construction.

Kyle Lent is a maritime archaeologist at SEARCH Inc. specializing in remote-sensing surveys, site assessments, diver investigation, and data recovery projects.

Joseph Grinnan is a maritime archaeologist at SEARCH Inc. overseeing and conducting submerged remote-sensing surveys, diver identification, data recovery projects, and diver safety.

Alexander DeCaro is a maritime archaeologist specializing in marine remote sensing and the archaeological interpretation of acoustic datasets.