@jordansalama19

One July night in 1860, on a remote river bend just north of Mobile, Alabama, the last-known American slave ship went up in flames. At the behest of a wealthy Mobile businessman and slaveholder named Timothy Meaher, who had wagered a bet that he could smuggle enslaved people into the U.S. undetected, Captain William Foster had just sailed the 86-foot wooden vessel Clotilda from the port of Ouidah, in present-day Benin, back to the United States. Aboard were 110 captive Africans—even though the international slave trade had already been outlawed in the U.S. for more than 50 years. Once the enslaved people were hastily unloaded under the cover of darkness, Foster set fire to the ship, sinking Clotilda in an attempt to destroy all that remained of the horrific crime that the captain and the businessman had just committed. This week, I was in Mobile, Alabama to speak with scientists who have recovered artifacts from inside Clotilda's sunken hull, including charred timbers, that directly point to the fiery coverup of the crime more than 160 years after it was committed. Click the link in my bio to read my latest story for @natgeo. Photo 1: @deppphoto Photo 2: @elias.williams Photo 3: Alabama Historical Commission #clotilda #america #natgeo #history #race #shipwreck #archaeology #truecrime #storytelling #nature #river #alabama #africatown #mobile #sunset