🔗 Share this article

Over the spanning nearly four hundred years, the transatlantic slave trade saw 12.5 million Africans trafficked from their homelands to the Americas. A staggering 1.8 million of those individuals perished during the Middle Passage, enduring unfathomable conditions of extreme confinement, filth, and disease. Some took their own lives by leaping overboard, while still more were forcibly cast into the sea.

A Tale of Two Stories

In The Zorg, author Siddharth Kara presents two interconnected narratives. The first chronicles a harrowing incident aboard the eponymous slave ship—the deliberate murder of 132 captive individuals by its British crew. The second story explores how this atrocity came to influence the ending of the Atlantic slave trade in 1807, thanks largely by the relentless efforts of a dazzling array 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 begins in Liverpool, a port city that at the height of its economic power was responsible for 40% of Europe's slave trafficking. Financing slavery was a highly profitable venture for everyone from the wealthy but also the working classes. One such entrepreneur, William Gregson, saved up his earnings from his trade, invested them into the slave trade, and eventually became a prominent citizen and later mayor. Gregson provided the funds for the slave ship The William, which departed from Liverpool for West Africa in October 1780 under Captain Richard Hanley. Its cargo was loaded with commodities like tobacco, firearms, knives, and so-called “India goods” such as chintz and cowrie shells—the shells being a common currency in the acquisition 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 at war with the Dutch in late 1780, the Royal Navy granted British ships permission to seize Dutch ships 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, took aboard a disgraced British governor named Robert Stubbs, who had been expelled for graft.

A Voyage into Hell

When Hanley reached Cape Coast Castle—a fortress with a notorious slave dungeon beneath it—he assumed control of the captured Zorg. He then grossly overload it with captives, put a dozen of his own crew on board, and appointed Luke Collingwood, a ship's surgeon of dubious seamanship, its captain. In August 1781, the Zorg finally left Accra carrying 442 enslaved Africans, 17 crew members, and one depraved 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 fraught with disaster. "The flux" ravaged the vessel, followed by scurvy. The captain fell ill, 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 period testimonies to paint a picture of the sheer horror. The graphic testimony of Alexander Falconbridge, a doctor who became an activist, describes how the captives' skin was often worn down to the bone from being packed on bare wood, their flesh caught between the planks.

The Unspeakable Decision

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 appalling conditions below deck. This unspeakable act was not motivated by preserving life—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 did cover 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, along with women and children, among them a baby born during the voyage.

The Courtroom Battle

Back in Liverpool, investor William Gregson was dissatisfied with the financial return on his venture. He submitted an insurance claim for £30 per lost slave—a considerable sum in today's money. The insurers refused to pay. In March 1783, Gregson sued and won a trial by jury, with his lawyers claiming 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 prominent English newspaper. The author, who claimed to have been present the court proceedings, made a powerful case against slavery, using the Zorg case as a prime example of its inherent evil. Olaudah Equiano saw the letter and brought it to the abolitionist Granville Sharp, who filed a motion for a new trial. At the following hearing, the events on the Zorg were reviewed in meticulous detail, exactly what the abolitionists had wanted.

A Sustained Campaign

In the spring of 1787, the founding members of the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade first met. Over the following years, they petitioned, orated, organized campaigns, 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.

A Lasting Legacy

The question of who or what deserves credit for abolition remains contentious. The Zorg's influence, however, is visibly 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 sustained public movement was historic, serving as an testament to the power of moral courage, the pen, and unwavering persistence.

The Author's Approach

In contrast to his previous books—such as the acclaimed Cobalt Red—Kara has had to fill in certain gaps in the historical record. At times, imaginative flourishes contrast with rigorously researched accounts, giving the book a somewhat hybrid feel. Part thriller and part historical analysis, The Zorg ultimately manages to shedding light on one of history's darkest chapters, using compelling prose and documented fact to create a account that haunts the reader long after the final page.