The Wanderer

On November 28, 1858, a ship called the Wanderer slipped silently into a narrow coastal channel and unloaded its cargo of African slaves on Jekyll Island, thirty-eight years after slaving was made illegal. Built in 1856, the Wanderer began life as a yacht, but within a year had been outfitted as a slave ship. The Wanderer's slaving, engineered by three men who had ties to the anti-slavery Fire Eaters - William Corrie, J. Egbert Farnum, and Charles Lamar - was one of the first instances in a string of many to defy the Federal Government on that issue. "The New York Times" first reported the story as a hoax; however, as groups of Africans began to appear in the small towns surrounding Savannah, the story of the Wanderer began to leak out. As the story shifts between Savannah, Jekyll Island, the Congo River and New York City, the Wanderer's tale is played out in southern courtrooms, the elegant salons of the New York Yacht Club, the offices of "The New York Times".