🔗 Share this article

Over the course of nearly four hundred years, the Atlantic slave trafficking system resulted in 12.5 million Africans trafficked from their homelands to the Americas. A staggering 1.8 million of those individuals died during the Middle Passage, subjected to unfathomable conditions of extreme confinement, squalor, and illness. Some chose to end their suffering by leaping 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 details a horrific incident aboard the namesake slave ship—the deliberate murder of 132 enslaved Africans by its British crew. The second story examines how this atrocity played a pivotal role in the ending of the Atlantic slave trade in 1807, thanks largely by the dedicated work of a coalition of committed campaigners. Among them was Olaudah Equiano, who authored one of the rare first-person accounts 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 height of its prosperity was responsible for 40% of Europe's slave trafficking. Investing in slavery was a highly profitable venture for everyone from the wealthy to the working classes. One such entrepreneur, William Gregson, accumulated his earnings from his trade, ploughed them into the slave trade, and eventually became a wealthy burgher and even mayor. Gregson provided the funds for 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 so-called “India goods” such as chintz and cowrie shells—the latter being a standard rate in the purchase of enslaved people.

The Capture of the Zorg

Around the same time, a Dutch slave vessel named the Zorg (later anglicized by the British as the Zong) had left the Netherlands. With Britain declaring war on the Dutch in late 1780, the Royal Navy granted British ships authority to capture Dutch ships at sea—a de facto sanctioning of privateering. The Zorg was subsequently taken by a British captain and anchored off the Gold Coast. Meanwhile, Captain Hanley, during one of his voyages, took aboard a fleeing British governor named Robert Stubbs, who had been removed for corruption.

The Nightmare Passage

When Hanley reached Cape Coast Castle—a stronghold with a notorious slave dungeon beneath it—he took command of the captured Zorg. He then grossly overload it with enslaved people, put a dozen of his own crew on board, and made Luke Collingwood, a ship's surgeon of dubious seamanship, its captain. In August 1781, the Zorg left Accra carrying 442 enslaved Africans, 17 crew members, and one notorious passenger: the former governor, Robert Stubbs.

Kara is particularly skilled at using contemporaneous sources to vividly reconstruct the general hell of being transported on a slave ship.

The Zorg's journey was plagued with calamity. "The flux" ravaged 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 masterfully utilizes eyewitness accounts to paint a picture of the sheer horror. The graphic testimony of Alexander Falconbridge, a ship's surgeon turned abolitionist, describes how the enslaved people's skin was frequently worn down to the bone from being packed on bare wood, their flesh pinched and torn between the planks.

The Unspeakable Decision

By late November 1781, the Zorg was far from Jamaica and dangerously short on water. The crew made the decision to throw overboard a number of the captives, who had already suffered through months of appalling conditions below deck. This unspeakable act was not motivated by ensuring survival—the Africans had pleaded to be allowed to live, even without water rations—but by cold economic greed. Ship insurance policies did not cover deaths from natural causes, but they would pay for cargo jettisoned 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 dissatisfied with the financial return on his investment. He submitted an insurance claim for £30 per drowned captive—a considerable sum in today's money. The insurers refused 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 published essay appeared in a widely read English newspaper. The author, who claimed to have attended the court proceedings, made a powerful case against slavery, citing the Zorg case as a key illustration of its brutality. Olaudah Equiano saw the letter and took it to the activist Granville Sharp, who filed a motion for a new trial. At the subsequent hearing, the events on the Zorg were examined in meticulous detail, exactly what the abolitionists had wanted.

The Road to 1807

In the spring of 1787, the initial group of the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade first met. Over the subsequent years, they wrote letters, made speeches, organized campaigns, 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.

An Enduring Impact

The question of who or what deserves credit for abolition is a matter of debate. The Zorg's influence, however, is visibly evident in J.M.W. Turner's famous painting, The Slave Ship, which was based on the events of 1781. While slavery has been near-universal in human history, its abolition following a sustained mass campaign was historic, serving as an testament to the power of moral courage, the pen, and relentless persistence.

The Author's Approach

Unlike his other work—such as the acclaimed Cobalt Red—Kara has had to address certain lacunae in the available documentation. Consequently, imaginative flourishes sit awkwardly next to scrupulously factual accounts, giving the book a slightly hybrid feel. A blend of narrative suspense and part historical analysis, The Zorg nevertheless succeeds in shedding light on one of history's most horrific episodes, using compelling prose and meticulous research to create a portrait that stays with the reader well after the final page.