High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The first USS Wanderer was a high-speed schooner originally in service in the slave trade and seized for service with the United States Navy during the American Civil War. In U.S. Navy service from 1861 to 1865, and under outright U.S. Navy ownership from 1863 to 1865, she was used by the Union Navy as a gunboat, as a tender, and as a hospital ship.