The hunt for the wreck of the Clotilda, the last American slave ship, goes on.

A previously unexplored 19th century shipwreck discovered in the Mobile-Tensaw Delta, which archaeologists said might be the Clotilda, has been ruled out as the ill-fated ship after further examination this week. In the end, this wreck was simply too big, with a significant portion hidden beneath mud and deep water.

AL.com reporter Ben Raines found the wreck when it was exposed along the shoreline of the Mobile River during extreme low tides in the first week of January. The wreck was found alongside an island where Captain William Foster wrote that he burned and sank the Clotilda in 1860. Raines brought archaeologists to the site, who made further examinations during the few days the ship was exposed. Their study set in motion a full-scale investigation of the wreck by the Alabama Historical Commission and the international partners of the Slave Wrecks Project, which include the National Park Service, the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture, and Diving with a Purpose - a group of African American divers who donate their time to the Slave Wrecks Project. In addition, SEARCH, one of the world's leading private archaeological exploration firms, provided an archaeological team.

Jim Delgado, in the foreground, and a team of divers spread out along different parts of the hull of an unidentified wreck in the Delta as they map the ship.

The overall effort was spearheaded by SEARCH's Jim Delgado, one of the most acclaimed marine archaeologists of the modern era. Delgado, a Nat Geo explorer, was the longtime host of The Sea Hunters, a National Geographic TV series. He famously and single-handedly discovered the wreck of the lost 19th Century "Sub Marine Explorer" (the vessel that gave submarines their name) while on a cruise ship vacation stop in Panama, and participated in the exploration of the Titanic and the raising of the Civil War era submarine H. L. Hunley.

A team of a dozen archaeologists from the various groups armed with scuba gear studied the submerged site Thursday and Friday, carefully mapping the wreck site, including portions of the ship that are located in deeper water and were not exposed during the low tide event. That part of the search required scuba divers to feel their way around the bottom of the muddy Mobile River in zero visibility conditions.

With the proper permits from state and federal officials, the archaeologists were also allowed to dig around on the ship, probing the mud to find its outline even where buried. Delgado said that made the difference. He said University of West Florida archaeologists Greg Cook and John Bratten made the right judgment when they called for more study after their initial field examination during the low water event in January. During that examination, because no permits had been issued, archaeologists were not allowed to disturb the wreck in any way.

Based on the evidence available at the time, "they made a perfectly reasonable call that this might be the Clotida and said 'let's take a better look.'"

"Based on what was known from the first examination, the photos of the site during the low water, it definitely looked intriguing. There was no way to know without this more thorough investigation, with divers in the water, whether this was Clotilda," said Delgado. "Even though it is not, the fires have been lit. There is a strong will to find Clotilda now. There is international interest in this story now."

Delgado credited the Alabama Historical Commission with assembling a top-notch team to investigate the wreck.

"The response you see here, this is a state government that acted quickly, decisively, and in the right way. They reached out to the federal partners and the private sector. I couldn't be more impressed to see what Lisa Jones and her team put together to get us here so quickly," Delgado said.

"We could not have done this without these people and these partnerships. We've made all these new friends. This is a powerful story," Lisa Jones said, adding that finding the final resting place of the Clotilda "is an important objective and we look forward to working with our partners on the next phase of this exciting project."

"The discovery and first examination of the wreck by Ben Raines and our colleagues at the University of West Florida and the media stories that followed have powerfully reconnected the story of Clotilda to a national and international audience," said Lisa D. Jones, Executive Director of the AHC. "It shares a story with profound meaning in Alabama, and especially to the descendant community of Africatown. While the follow up investigation of the Twelvemile Island Wreck has found that this wreck is not Clotilda, its discovery and the attention paid to it will be the start of a renewed effort to find Clotilda."

The archaeological team suggested such an effort begin quickly.

"When your story broke, the ripples went all the way around the world. I got calls from people in my line of work all over saying, "Have you seen this!" said Dave Conlin, chief of the National Park Service Submerged Resources Center, the most highly specialized unit of the park service. Conlin led the team from the Slave Wrecks project. Previously, he helped plan and execute the recovery of the Mobile-built H.L. Hunley, the first submarine to successfully sink an enemy ship during war, and participated with Delgado in a detailed mapping of the Titanic wreck site.

"We've learned this is not the end of the story here, but now everyone around the world wants to hear how this turns out," Conlin said.

At present, no one knows the whereabouts of a single American ship involved in the slave trade. The slave ship on display in the Smithsonian is actually a Portuguese ship recovered off the coast of South Africa. The Clotilda is the only chance for finding a ship involved in the American slave trade, and coincidentally, its voyage is better documented than any other slave ship.

The captives brought aboard the Clotilda are the only group of African brought to the United States who know precisely where they were taken from, precisely when it happened, the name of the ship that brought them, and where they ended up once in the United States.

Many of those aboard the Clotilda ultimately settled in a community they created near Mobile known as Africatown. The captives were freed just five years after they were enslaved, thanks to the end of the Civil War. The group, 110 strong, originally asked their captor, an Alabama steamboat captain and plantation owner named Timothy Meaher, to pay for passage back to Africa. After he refused, they appealed to the U.S. government, again to no avail. Ultimately, some members of the group bought a small piece of land north of Mobile from Meaher and created Africatown, where some of the descendants of the original slaves still live. They spoke their native tongue, farmed using traditional African methods, and ran their own school. They created a small piece of Africa in coastal Alabama.

For decades, Africatown has suffered from political and economic neglect. Residents hope the ultimate discovery of the ship may bring some attention and prosperity to this unique piece of the nation's history.

"If this isn't the Clotilda, then we'll keep looking until we find it. This story has reminded everyone that we are here, and that the ship is out here," said Joe Womack, a descendant of a Clotilda survivor and a community leader in Africatown. "This whole episode has finally brought Africatown and its story to everyone's attention. That's something we've been trying to do for as long as I can remember."

David Morgan, director of the National Park Service's southeast Archaeological Center, said, "This is a story about community. We've looked for wrecks that carried enslaved people, but what is important is the people, that's what these stories are about."

Morgan said the international hub-bub over the possibility that the Clotilda had been found was proof of the power of this story. But it was also appropriate for a story of national import. In the end, it is a story of people who triumphed over incredible odds, Morgan said.

"It's wonderful if you can lay your hands on actual history. But even if you can't, the search for it is just as important in some ways, because the search for it is the thing that gives you the opportunity to talk about it," Morgan said. "And to take things, and bring them back into memory - that's one of the phrases I've come to like using, to bring this back into memory. That makes things a tool, but also a way to speak about them, to remind people of their past, of our past."

Delgado said the reaction to the news of the possible discovery of the Clotilda illustrates the power of archaeology and exploring the past.

"This really shows how inspirational a find like this can be. Even though you didn't find what you were looking for, I think that the ship is going to be found very close to this spot that you honed in on. The ship is here, somewhere right around us, right now," Delgado said.

Delgado said the AL.com article revealed something that will guide the search going forward.

"The only part of the Mobile River that hasn't been searched with modern equipment is this part where we are sitting, where you found this ship," Delgado said. "This is great, because it tells us where to look. Everywhere else has been searched, so we've narrowed it down to this short section of the river, and that's where we will focus our search going forward."

Finding the Clotilda 44 Gallery: Finding the Clotilda

Ben Raines specializes in investigations and natural wonders. You can follow him via Facebook, Twitter at BenHRaines, and on Instagram. You can reach him via email at braines@al.com.

You can watch Ben's most recent documentary, The Underwater Forest, here on Youtube.