🔗 Share this article

Over the spanning nearly four hundred years, the Atlantic slave trafficking system saw 12.5 million Africans trafficked from their homelands to the Americas. A staggering 1.8 million of those souls died during the Middle Passage, subjected to unfathomable conditions of overcrowding, squalor, and disease. Many chose to end their suffering by throwing themselves overboard, whereas still more were callously thrown into the sea.

A Tale of Two Stories

In The Zorg, author Siddharth Kara presents two parallel narratives. The first chronicles a horrific incident aboard the namesake slave ship—the systematic drowning of 132 enslaved Africans by its British crew. The second story examines how this event came to influence the ending of the Atlantic slave trade in 1807, driven in large part by the dedicated work of a coalition of committed campaigners. Among them was Olaudah Equiano, who wrote one of the few surviving first-person narratives of the Middle Passage, describing it as “a scene of horror almost inconceivable”.

Liverpool's Central Role

The account originates in Liverpool, a port city that at the height of its economic power was accountable for 40% of Europe's slave trafficking. Investing in slavery was a highly profitable venture for everyone from the elites but also the common people. One such entrepreneur, William Gregson, accumulated his earnings from rope-making, ploughed them into the slave trade, and rose to become a wealthy burgher and later 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 trade goods like tobacco, firearms, knives, and so-called “India goods” such as chintz and cowrie shells—the shells being a common currency in the purchase of enslaved people.

A Ship Seized

Around the same time, a Dutch slave vessel named the Zorg (later referred to by the British as the Zong) had departed the Netherlands. With Britain declaring war on the Dutch in late 1780, the Royal Navy granted British ships authority to seize Dutch property at sea—a virtual license for privateering. The Zorg was soon taken by a British captain and anchored off the Gold Coast. Meanwhile, Captain Hanley, during one of his voyages, picked up a fleeing British governor named Robert Stubbs, who had been expelled for corruption.

The Nightmare Passage

When Hanley arrived at Cape Coast Castle—a stronghold with a notorious holding cell beneath it—he assumed control of the captured Zorg. He proceeded to severely overcrowd it with enslaved people, put a dozen of his own crew on board, and made Luke Collingwood, a ship's surgeon of questionable nautical skill, its captain. In August 1781, the Zorg left Accra carrying 442 enslaved Africans, 17 crew members, and one depraved passenger: the former governor, Robert Stubbs.

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

The Zorg's journey was plagued with calamity. "The flux" ravaged the vessel, and then scurvy. The captain succumbed to sickness, lost his senses, 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 paint a picture of the sheer horror. The graphic testimony of Alexander Falconbridge, a doctor who became an activist, details how the enslaved people's 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 far from Jamaica and critically short on water. The crew resolved to jettison a number of the captives, who had already endured months of obscene conditions below deck. This unspeakable act was not motivated by ensuring survival—the Africans had begged to be allowed to live, even without water rations—but by pure economic greed. Maritime insurance policies did not cover losses from natural causes, but they would pay for cargo discarded out of “necessity” for the ship's safety. Over a period of days, the crew drowned “those Africans who would be worth less at auction”—the weak, the sick, along with 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 filed an insurance claim for £30 per lost slave—a substantial sum in today's money. The insurers declined to pay. In March 1783, Gregson sued and won a trial by jury, with his lawyers arguing that throwing the enslaved people overboard had been “necessary.”

Catalyzing the Movement

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 published essay appeared in a widely read English newspaper. The author, who claimed to have been present the court proceedings, argued compellingly against slavery, using the Zorg case as a prime example of its brutality. Olaudah Equiano read the letter and took it to the activist Granville Sharp, who petitioned for a new trial. At the following hearing, the events on the Zorg were reviewed in meticulous detail, precisely what the abolitionists had hoped for.

A Sustained Campaign

In the spring of 1787, the founding members of the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade convened. Over the following years, they petitioned, orated, lobbied tirelessly, and meticulously documented 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.

A Lasting Legacy

The question of who or what should be credited for abolition remains a matter of debate. The Zorg's legacy, however, is powerfully captured by J.M.W. Turner's famous painting, The Slave Ship, which was based on the events of 1781. While slavery has been widespread in human history, its abolition following a sustained mass campaign was unprecedented, serving as an affirmation to the power of moral courage, the pen, and unwavering determination.

Kara's Narrative Method

In contrast to his previous books—such as the acclaimed Cobalt Red—Kara has had to address certain gaps in the available documentation. At times, imaginative flourishes sit awkwardly next to rigorously researched accounts, giving the book a somewhat chimeric feel. A blend of narrative suspense and part serious nonfiction, The Zorg ultimately manages to illuminating one of history's darkest chapters, using powerful storytelling and meticulous research to assemble a portrait that haunts the reader long after the final page.