Alabama, Reference number: 100007119 – restricted,
Areas of Significance: Maritime History, Archeology/Historic, and Ethnic Heritage: Black.
Period of Significance: 1855-1860.
Clotilda is listed under Criteria A and D, at the national level of significance, and is known to have transported 110 African captives purchased on the west coast of what is now Benin to Alabama in violation of federal legislation outlawing the importation of slaves. On July 9, 1860, Clotilda’s captain and builder scuttled and burned the schooner to avoid seizure and examination by federal officials. The vessel is nationally significant for its association with the last known slave trading voyage that brought captives to the United States and the only archeologically recovered example of an American slave trading vessel lost in the transatlantic slave trade whose remains have been located and positively identified. Clotilda assumes additional significance when understood in tandem with the post-Civil War founding of Africatown (itself a nationally significant historic district listed in the National Register) by some of the very individuals who had been forcibly held captive aboard Clotilda. (See Section 8, pp. 40-41 for sample research questions.)
Link to file
Last updated: December 20, 2023