 Several hundred slaves a year were transported by the navy to the British colony of Sierra Leone, where they were made to serve as "apprentices" in the colonial economy until the Slavery Abolition Act 1833.The last recorded slave ship to land on U.S. soil was the "Clotilde", which in 1859 illegally smuggled a number of Africans into the town of Mobile, Alabama.The Africans on board were sold as slaves; however, slavery in the U.S. was abolished five years later following the end of the American Civil War in 1865.