The Wanderer

In late November 1858, the Wanderer entered a quiet coastal channel and put ashore more than 400 enslaved Africans on Jekyll Island, Georgia. The landing came nearly four decades after Congress had outlawed the transatlantic slave trade, and it marked the final time a vessel carried captives to the American mainland.

The ship began in 1856 as a sleek racing yacht, sailing under the New York Yacht Club's pennant and regarded as a successor to the famed yacht America. Within a year, its owners had secretly refitted it for the slave trade and steered it toward Africa, keeping the yacht club flag flying to disguise its real purpose. The conspirators also hoped the voyage would defy federal authority and push the country closer to civil war.

The New York Times initially dismissed the reports as a hoax. Yet when groups of Africans began appearing in small towns near Savannah, the truth spread, provoking protests and heated debate across the United States and in Europe. Calonius moves between Savannah, Jekyll Island, the Congo River, London and New York City, following the affair through Southern courtrooms, newspaper offices, the White House, African slave markets and the elegant homes of Southern society. The result is a narrative of life at sea and in high society that recovers a little-known episode from the Civil War era.