&sq=Qlik&lang=&file=File:USS_Wanderer_(1857).jpg) Wanderer in US Navy service during the American Civil War (1861–1865), after being used once in the slave trade and for mercantile trade.
| |
| History | |
|---|---|
 United States | |
| Name | Wanderer |
| Launched | 1858 |
| Fate | Lost 12 January 1871 |
| Notes |
|
| General characteristics | |
| Displacement | 300 tons |
| Length | 106 ft 0 in (32.31 m) |
| Beam | 25 ft 6 in (7.77 m) |
| Draught | 9 ft 6 in (2.90 m) |
| Propulsion | Sails |
| Sail plan | Schooner-rigged |
| Speed | 20 knots (37 km/h; 23 mph) |
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.[1] It was the last to carry a large cargo, arriving with some 400 people.[1] Clotilda, which transported 110 people from Dahomey in 1860, is the last known ship to bring enslaved people from Africa to the US.
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. The Atlantic slave trade had been prohibited under US law since 1808. An estimated 409 enslaved people survived the voyage from the Kingdom of Kongo to Georgia. Reports of the smuggling outraged the North. The federal government prosecuted Lamar and other investors, the captain and crew in 1860, but failed to win a conviction.[1]
During the American Civil War, Union forces confiscated the ship and used it for various military roles. It was decommissioned in 1865, converted to merchant use, and lost off Cuba in 1871. Lamar himself would later become the last Confederate soldier to be killed in action during the war.
In November 2008, the Jekyll Island Museum unveiled an exhibit dedicated to the enslaved Africans on Wanderer.[2] That month also marked the unveiling of a memorial sculpture on southern Jekyll Island dedicated to the enslaved people who were landed there.
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- ^ a b c Magazine, Smithsonian; Gershon, Livia. "This Yacht Trafficked Enslaved Africans Long After the Slave Trade Was Abolished". Smithsonian Magazine. Retrieved 2023-03-13.
- ^ Jekyll Island Beachscape, vol 5, #42, Nov/Dec 2008, pg. 1