Wanderer was the penultimate documented ship to bring an illegal cargo of enslaved people from Africa to the United States, landing at Jekyll Island, Georgia, on November 28, 1858.

Originally built in New York as a pleasure schooner, The Wanderer was purchased by Southern businessman Charles Augustus Lafayette Lamar and an investment group, and used in a conspiracy to import kidnapped people illegally.

[2] That month also marked the unveiling of a memorial sculpture on southern Jekyll Island dedicated to the enslaved people who were landed there.

The trans-Atlantic slave trade was made illegal by both Britain and the United States in 1807, with the two laws coming into effect on 1 May 1807 and 1 January 1808, respectively.

[4] In contrast, the United States made little effort to enforce their legislation until 1820 and 1821, when US naval ships patrolled the West African coast.

For a period of 10 days, he had shelves and pens built into the hold in order to accept a shipment of 490-600 people, who were loaded on the ship.

Wanderer was built in a Setauket, New York (Long Island), shipyard in 1857 as a pleasure craft yacht for Colonel John Johnson.

[citation needed] While on a trip to New Orleans, Johnson stopped in Charleston, South Carolina and sold the Wanderer to William C. Corrie.

[13] These figures present a slightly higher mortality rate than the estimated average of 12 percent during the illegal trading era.

[14] Hoping to evade arrest, Lamar had the slaves shipped to markets in Savannah and Augusta, Georgia, South Carolina, and Florida.

The federal government tried Lamar and his conspirators three times for piracy in Savannah, GA but was unable to get a conviction, possibly due to the jury composed of only white, Southern men.

Slocum, working undercover, spoke with slave traders, plantation owners, and townspeople, hunting down every possible lead.

In the end he delivered a detailed report, in which he concluded that the rumors of subsequent landings, "were founded upon the movements of the Wanderer negroes, or else they were mere fabrications, manufactured and circulated for political effect, or to fill a column in a sensation newspaper.

Some of the people transported on the Wanderer spoke the Yoruba language, were abducted from "from some towns west of Abeckuta, by Dahomey slave hunters," and had been sold at Porto Nevo.

Raccoons, opossum, hares, and even skunks were regarded as great delicacies, and some of the older ones had a knack of catching and eating rattlesnakes.

"[20] A third account reported that a number of survivors later committed suicide under the belief that "if they would jump into the sea and drown themselves they would be carried back to Africa by the good spirits...among them being one called King Mingo, who decoyed two children to St. Simon's beach, during the absence of his mistress, and all three of them jumped from a high bluff Into the swift current and were drowned.

[21] (Former governor of South Carolina D. C. Heyward believed that Lamar had also imported slaves from Africa to the United States on the E. A. Rawlins and Richard Cobden.

[27] According to one account, well over 800 people were packed into the Wanderer, vastly more than the ship was meant to carry, and fewer than 500 landed in the United States.

In November 1859 the ship sailed again on another slaving expedition, by a crew of 27 "stealing" the vessel from its owner, with the apparent connivance of port officials.

The owner, who was suspected of participating or approving, attempted to chase it on another ship, "but he was like the Irishman looking for a day's work, and praying that he might not find it".

After he arrived at Boston on 24 December 1859, the mate turned her over to federal authorities, and 10 men were imprisoned; those who had been forced onto the ship were released.

After she had been sold into mercantile service in June 1865, Wanderer operated commercially until on 12 January 1871, when she was lost off Cape Maisí, Cuba.