Slave traders burned the last American slave ship to cover up their crimes. Found it now.

A photo shows the Mobile, Alabama coastline.

Nearly 150 years later, the last ship used to bring kidnapped people to the United States to be sold as slaves appears to have appeared off the coast of Mobile, Alabama.

Slave owners used what became known as the Clotilda to bring 110 people kidnapped from what is now Benin to Mobile in 1860 for a statement. That voyage took place 52 years after the enactment of an 1808 law prohibiting slave traders from bringing more people to the United States to sell slaves, and a year before the outbreak of the American Civil War. After the 110 kidnapped people were unloaded, the ship was burned and ditched to hide evidence of the slave traders' crimes, according to the Alabama Historical Commission (AHC).

Now the AHC says a burned-out shipwreck found off the Gulf Coast is likely the Clotilda. It doesn't have a visible name, but it fits the known characteristics of the ship. "6 Civil War myths have been deciphered," James Delgado, one of the archaeologists leading the verification project, said in a statement from the committee. "We're wary of anything with the name of a ship or something resembling a bell," but the physical and forensic evidence strongly suggests it's the Croyda.

For example, the size and dimensions of the wreck appear to be identical to those described in historical documents about Croyda. Additionally, the wreck consists of matching "locally sourced timber" and so-called pig iron to Croyda specifications, according to the statement.

The discovery follows a previous report that Croyda was discovered in 2018. That ship turned out not to be the Clotilda, according to the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia at Ferris State University, the AL reported. , the Clotilda sailed under the command of William Foster, an employee of Timothy Meaher, a wealthy mobile shipyard owner, He built the ship and drew up plans in 1856. [Black people were not enslaved in the United States until 1963]

"Local legend says this meant that some 'Northern gentleman' made a bet that he could break the 1807 law without getting caught," the museum wrote.

When the Clotilda arrived, according to the museum, federal authorities knew of the plan, so Foster secretly brought enslaved people to town under cover of darkness and destroyed the ship. Boat.

After the war, many of Clotilda's survivors settled in the rural highlands of Alabama, which they called Africatown, according to the museum.

Where possible, they avoided white people, the museum writes.

The last survivor of those forced to travel on slave ships, according to the museum Cudjo Lewis (also known as Kazoola) lived until 1935. He met Booker T. Washington and told his story to author Zora Neale Hurston.

Editor's note: This story has been updated to the correct date from 1956 to 1856. 9 Absolutely Evil Medical Experiment Photos: 19th-Century Artifacts Pulled from Fallen Trees 10 Epic Wars That Changed History

Originally published in Live Science.