The Last Slave Ship: The True Story of How Clotilda Was Found, Her Descendants, and an Extraordinary Reckoning

by Ben Raines Narrated by Kevin R. Free

Overview

The “enlightening” (The Guardian) true story of the last ship to carry enslaved people to America, the remarkable town its survivors' founded after emancipation, and the complicated legacy their descendants carry with them to this day-by the journalist who discovered the ship's remains.

Fifty years after the Atlantic slave trade was outlawed, the Clotilda became the last ship in history to bring enslaved Africans to the United States. The ship was scuttled and burned on arrival to hide the wealthy perpetrators to escape prosecution. Despite numerous efforts to find the sunken wreck, Clotilda remained hidden for the next 160 years. But in 2019, journalist Ben Raines made international news when he successfully concluded his obsessive quest through the swamps of Alabama to uncover one of our nation's most important historical artifacts.

Traveling from Alabama to the ancient African kingdom of Dahomey in modern-day Benin, Raines recounts the ship's perilous journey, the story of its rediscovery, and its complex legacy. Against all odds, Africatown, the Alabama community founded by the captives of the Clotilda, prospered in the Jim Crow South. Zora Neale Hurston visited in 1927 to interview Cudjo Lewis, telling the story of his enslavement in the New York Times bestseller Barracoon. And yet the haunting memory of bondage has been passed on through generations. Clotilda is a ghost haunting three communities-the descendants of those transported into slavery, the descendants of their fellow Africans who sold them, and the descendants of their fellow American enslavers. This connection binds these groups together to this day. At the turn of the century, descendants of the captain who financed the Clotilda's journey lived nearby-where, as significant players in the local real estate market, they disenfranchised and impoverished residents of Africatown.

From these parallel stories emerges a profound depiction of America as it struggles to grapple with the traumatic past of slavery and the ways in which racial oppression continues to this day. And yet, at its heart, The Last Slave Ship remains optimistic-an epic tale of one community's triumphs over great adversity and a celebration of the power of human curiosity to uncover the truth about our past and heal its wounds.

Editorial Reviews

FEBRUARY 2022 - AudioFile

This audiobook recounts the voyage of the CLOTILDA, the last ship to bring enslaved people from Africa to the U.S. But the story goes far beyond that one aspect. The lives of several of the Africans on board before and after the ocean trip are the primary focus of the work. Kevin Free does a first-rate job of narrating this work. He presents the story in an easy-to-follow tone, made even easier by the author’s journalistic style of writing. Free alters his tone when quoting the former enslaved people directly, an effective technique without any hint of stereotype. His facility with foreign names and locations also makes listening easier. In all, it’s a compelling story told well. R.C.G. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award, 2023 Audies Finalist © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine

Publishers Weekly

★ 11/15/2021

Journalist Raines (Saving America’s Amazon) unearths in this riveting chronicle the story of the last slave ship to arrive in the U.S. In 1860, more than 50 years after the Atlantic slave trade was banned, the Clotilda sailed to Mobile, Ala., with 110 people illegally taken from the Kingdom of Dahomey in present-day Benin. In Alabama, the captives were divided among Timothy Meaher, a steamboat captain and plantation owner who had arranged the ship’s voyage on a bet, and his brothers. Afterwards, Meaher burned and scuttled the ship to escape prosecution. Freed at the end of the Civil War, the Clotilda’s survivors set up an autonomous community called Africatown near Mobile that flourished until the 1970s. Raines profiles the founders of Africatown and their descendants, vividly describes the captives’ tempestuous voyage on the Clotilda and their struggle to assimilate to American society, and explains how his knowledge of the Mobile-Tensaw delta helped him locate the wreck in 2018. He also documents how the discovery has helped to foster a movement for reconciliation between the descendants of the enslaved and their captors in Africa and the U.S. The result is an evocative and informative tale of exploitation, deceit, and resilience. Agent: Paul Lucas, Janklow & Nesbit Assoc. (Jan.)

From the Publisher

"The fast-paced narrative begins with the voyage and follows the Clotilda’s survivors beyond the Civil War....Raines vividly conjures the watery landscape into which the Africans stepped... Knowledge of these waterways also led Raines to locate the Clotilda in a place previous searchers had ignored." — The New York Times (Editors' Choice)

"In our uncertain times, The Last Slave Ship.. is a welcome and affecting history lesson... Enlightening." — The Guardian

"A multidimensional exploration of the Clotilda, its bad actors and the descendants of the survivors... an important, weighty, timely read." — The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

"Ben Raines made headlines in 2019 when he discovered the remains of the Clotilda, the last ship to bring enslaved people to America. His gripping, affecting book chronicles his search for the vessel in the swamps of Alabama and tells the stories of its captives and their descendants."— The Christian Science Monitor (Best Books of February)

"The Last Slave Ship is an action-packed, whip-smart true account that’s filled with science, history, and compassion. Readers will devour it." — The Washington Informer

"Ben Raines’ passionate detective work led him to discover the most famous slave shipwreck... Raines has written a crucial chapter in this unique story of loss and exploitation, but also of unsurmountable strength and hopefulness. An inspiring and captivating book.” — Sylviane A. Diouf, PhD, author of Dreams of Africa in Alabama: The Slave Ship Clotilda and the Story of the Last Africans Brought to America

"The Last Slave Ship is all at once the true story of a terrible crime and its survivors, a riveting account of discovering the evidence its perpetrators hoped would never be found, and a moving attempt to grapple with its legacy. We may never ultimately be able to reckon adequately with slavery, but Ben Raines reminds us that the task’s immensity is no excuse for neglecting it. This is a powerful and important book."— Joshua Rothman, the Dept. of History professor at University of Alabama

"Raines’ adroit descriptions of the people and events triggered by the voyage of Clotilda are not only riveting, but speak to the true spirits of all involved." — Darron Patterson, President of The Clotilda Descendants Association

"An evocative and informative tale of exploitation, deceit, and resilience.”— Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“A highly readable, elucidating narrative that investigates all the layers of a traumatic history.— Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Library Journal

★ 12/01/2021

In 2019, journalist Raines made international headlines when he discovered the remains of the Clotilda (the last known ship to carry enslaved people to the United States), ending a decades-long search for the vessel. Here, Raines weaves together the many complex strands of the Clotilda's history to compelling effect, including the ways in which its discovery has impacted the descendants of the ship's survivors. Timothy Meaher, raised in Maine but who made his fortune as a steamboat captain and slave trader in Alabama, launched the Clotilda in 1859 as a bet that he could elude the federal ban on the importation of enslaved people. Alongside this book's account of Meaher's life, Raines also dives deep into the Clotilda's story on the other side of the Atlantic by examining the role played by the Dahomey kingdom (present-day Benin) in violently capturing and selling members of neighboring tribal nations, including those who were enslaved on the Clotilda. The most powerful parts of the book explore the ship's legacy in Africatown, a settlement near Mobile, AL, founded by emancipated survivors of the Clotilda after the Civil War. VERDICT Raines effectively blends historical research and journalism into a gripping transatlantic tale of trauma, hope, and reconciliation. An absolutely essential book.—Colin Chappell, Anne Arundel Cty. P.L., MD

FEBRUARY 2022 - AudioFile

This audiobook recounts the voyage of the CLOTILDA, the last ship to bring enslaved people from Africa to the U.S. But the story goes far beyond that one aspect. The lives of several of the Africans on board before and after the ocean trip are the primary focus of the work. Kevin Free does a first-rate job of narrating this work. He presents the story in an easy-to-follow tone, made even easier by the author’s journalistic style of writing. Free alters his tone when quoting the former enslaved people directly, an effective technique without any hint of stereotype. His facility with foreign names and locations also makes listening easier. In all, it’s a compelling story told well. R.C.G. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award, 2023 Audies Finalist © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine

Kirkus Reviews

★ 2021-10-12
The complex history behind the recent discovery of the last known slave ship to convey Africans to the U.S. before the Civil War.

In 2019, environmental journalist Raines, who lives in Alabama, helped unearth from the muddy delta outside Mobile the sunken remains of the schooner Clotilda, which made its infamous run to the west coast of Africa in July 1860 and returned carrying 110 slaves. “This is the story of that ship,” writes the author, “the people shaped by her complex legacy, and the healing that began on both sides of the Atlantic when her wooden carcass finally came to the surface.” Although importing Africans for slavery had been illegal since 1807, the cost of cotton had skyrocketed, and the South desperately needed cheap labor. Timothy Meaher, the racist Alabama steamboat captain who organized the Clotilda’s voyage, acted partly out of a bet, partly to make a fortune from human cargo, but mostly to defy federal enforcers. Raines weaves an impressively multilayered story, building on some of the information he provided in his previous book, Saving America’s Amazon(2020). The author discusses the reckless slave-owning Southern aristocracy and the brutal slave-capturing and -running Kingdom of Dahomey (now Benin), which “may have been responsible for capturing and deporting about 30 percent of all the Africans sold into bondage worldwide between 1600 and the 1880s.” Raines also focuses on the resilient community of Africatown, which the survivors of the Clotildacreated outside of Mobile in the aftermath of the war. Sadly, the survivors could not raise the money to fund their return to Africa, but their town thrived, and they forged a community on their own terms. Raines should be commended for his dogged journalistic work locating the sunken ship, which the owners tried to destroy, as well as the descendants of those original enslaved Africans.

A highly readable, elucidating narrative that investigates all the layers of a traumatic history.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940173248343
Publisher:	Simon & Schuster
Publication date:	01/25/2022
Edition description:	Unabridged

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