🔗 Share this article

Over the spanning nearly four centuries, the transatlantic slave trade saw 12.5 million Africans trafficked from their homelands to the Americas. A devastating 1.8 million of those individuals perished during the Middle Passage, subjected to unfathomable conditions of extreme confinement, filth, and disease. Some took their own lives by leaping overboard, whereas still more were callously thrown into the sea.

A Tale of Two Stories

In The Zorg, author Siddharth Kara weaves together two parallel narratives. The first chronicles a harrowing incident aboard the eponymous slave ship—the systematic drowning of 132 enslaved Africans by its British crew. The second story explores how this event came to influence the ending of the Atlantic slave trade in 1807, thanks largely by the relentless efforts of a coalition of committed campaigners. Among them was Olaudah Equiano, who authored one of the rare first-person narratives of the Middle Passage, describing it as “a scene of horror almost inconceivable”.

Liverpool's Central Role

The tale originates in Liverpool, a port city that at the peak of its economic power was responsible for 40% of Europe's slave trade. Investing in slavery was a highly profitable venture for everyone from the wealthy but also the common people. One such entrepreneur, William Gregson, saved up his wages from his trade, invested them into the slave trade, and eventually became a prominent citizen and even mayor. Gregson financed the slave ship The William, which set sail from Liverpool for West Africa in October 1780 under Captain Richard Hanley. Its hold was filled with commodities like tobacco, firearms, knives, and various “India goods” such as chintz and cowrie shells—the shells being a common currency in the purchase of enslaved people.

The Capture of the Zorg

Concurrently, a Dutch slave vessel named the Zorg (later anglicized by the British as the Zong) had left the Netherlands. With Britain at war with the Dutch in late 1780, the Royal Navy granted British ships permission to capture Dutch property at sea—a de facto sanctioning of piracy. The Zorg was soon taken by a British captain and anchored off the Gold Coast. Meanwhile, Captain Hanley, on a slaving expedition, picked up a fleeing British governor named Robert Stubbs, who had been removed for graft.

The Nightmare Passage

When Hanley reached Cape Coast Castle—a fortress with a vast slave dungeon beneath it—he took command of the captured Zorg. He then severely overcrowd it with enslaved people, put a dozen of his own crew on board, and appointed Luke Collingwood, a ship's surgeon of dubious nautical skill, its captain. In August 1781, the Zorg finally left Accra carrying 442 captives, 17 crew members, and one depraved passenger: the former governor, Robert Stubbs.

Kara excels in using contemporaneous sources to vividly reconstruct the collective nightmare of being transported on a slave ship.

The Zorg's journey was fraught with calamity. Dysentery swept through the vessel, followed by scurvy. The captain succumbed to sickness, became delirious, and handed command over to Stubbs. Thus, “a ship full of decay and death was being commanded by a passenger.” Kara effectively employs eyewitness accounts to illustrate of the unmitigated terror. The powerful testimony of Alexander Falconbridge, a doctor who became an activist, details how the captives' skin was often rubbed raw to the bone from being packed on bare wood, their flesh pinched and torn between the planks.

A Calculated Atrocity

By late November 1781, the Zorg was miles from Jamaica and dangerously short on water. The crew resolved to throw overboard a number of the enslaved Africans, who had already endured months of appalling conditions below deck. This monstrous act was not motivated by ensuring survival—the Africans had begged to be spared, even without water rations—but by pure economic greed. Ship insurance policies did not cover losses from natural causes, but they did cover cargo discarded out of “necessity” for the ship's safety. Over several days, the crew drowned “those Africans who would be worth less at auction”—the infirm, the sick, including women and children, even a baby born during the voyage.

The Courtroom Battle

Back in Liverpool, investor William Gregson was unhappy about the profit on his investment. He submitted an insurance claim for £30 per drowned captive—a considerable sum in today's money. The insurers declined to pay. In March 1783, Gregson took them to court and was awarded a trial by jury, with his lawyers arguing that throwing the enslaved people overboard had been “necessary.”

The Spark for Abolition

According to Kara, “there is a direct line of causality between the public exposure of the Zorg murders and the first movement to abolish slavery in England.” Merely twelve days after the trial, an anonymous letter appeared in a widely read English newspaper. The author, who claimed to have attended the court proceedings, argued compellingly against slavery, using the Zorg case as a prime example of its brutality. Olaudah Equiano saw the letter and brought it to the activist Granville Sharp, who petitioned for a new trial. At the subsequent hearing, the events on the Zorg were examined in meticulous detail, precisely what the abolitionists had wanted.

A Sustained Campaign

In the spring of 1787, the initial group of the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade first met. Over the following years, they wrote letters, orated, lobbied tirelessly, and gathered evidence on the particulars of the slave trade. “Their efforts,” Kara writes, “would lay a blueprint for the pursuit of social justice.” After years of struggles, the Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade was finally passed in 1807.

An Enduring Impact

The question of who or what should be credited for abolition is contentious. The Zorg's influence, however, is powerfully captured by J.M.W. Turner's famous painting, The Slave Ship, which was inspired by the events of 1781. While slavery has been near-universal in human history, its abolition following a prolonged public movement was historic, serving as an testament to the power of moral courage, the pen, and relentless persistence.

The Author's Approach

In contrast to his previous books—such as the acclaimed Cobalt Red—Kara has had to address certain gaps in the available documentation. Consequently, speculative passages contrast with rigorously researched accounts, giving the book a somewhat chimeric feel. Part thriller and part serious nonfiction, The Zorg ultimately manages to illuminating one of history's most horrific episodes, using compelling prose and documented fact to assemble a portrait that stays with the reader long after the final page.