The last ship to bring enslaved Africans to the United States will be assessed by researchers off the coast of Alabama.
The Alabama Historical Commission said a team will spent 10 days evaluating the remnants of the Clotilda starting Monday. A 100-foot-long barge will be used with equipment for divers and to store artifacts removed from the water.
The ship was scuttled in a river after dropping off 110 West Africans on the Alabama coast in 1860. Descendants of the captives still live nearby in a community called Africatown USA, just north of Mobile.
