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 died during the Middle Passage, subjected to unfathomable conditions of extreme confinement, squalor, and disease. Some chose to end their suffering by leaping overboard, while others 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 harrowing incident aboard the namesake slave ship—the deliberate murder 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 rare first-person accounts of the Middle Passage, describing it as “a scene of horror almost inconceivable”.
The Roots in Liverpool
The tale originates in Liverpool, a port city that at the peak of its economic power was accountable for 40% of Europe's slave trafficking. Financing slavery was a lucrative venture for everyone from the wealthy but also the common people. One such investor, William Gregson, accumulated 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 cargo was loaded with trade goods like tobacco, firearms, knives, and so-called “India goods” such as chintz and cowrie shells—the latter being a common currency in the acquisition of human beings.
A Ship Seized
Concurrently, a Dutch slave vessel named the Zorg (later referred to by the British as the Zong) had departed the Netherlands. With Britain at war with the Dutch in late 1780, the Royal Navy gave British ships permission to capture Dutch property at sea—a de facto sanctioning of privateering. The Zorg was soon captured by a British captain and anchored off the Gold Coast. Meanwhile, Captain Hanley, on a slaving expedition, picked up a disgraced British governor named Robert Stubbs, who had been removed for graft.
A Voyage into Hell
When Hanley arrived at Cape Coast Castle—a fortress with a notorious slave dungeon 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 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 is particularly skilled at using contemporaneous sources to bring to life the collective nightmare of being transported on a slave ship.
The Zorg's journey was fraught with disaster. Dysentery ravaged the vessel, and then scurvy. The captain succumbed to sickness, lost his senses, and appointed 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 often rubbed raw 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 miles from Jamaica and dangerously short on water. The crew made the decision to throw overboard a number of the enslaved Africans, who had already endured months of appalling conditions below deck. This unspeakable act was not motivated by preserving life—the Africans had pleaded to be allowed to live, even without water rations—but by cold economic greed. Ship insurance policies did not cover losses from disease, 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 weak, the sick, along with women and children, among them a baby born during the voyage.
Insurance and Injustice
Back in Liverpool, investor William Gregson was unhappy about the profit on his venture. 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 published essay appeared in a prominent English newspaper. The author, who claimed to have attended the court proceedings, made a powerful case against slavery, using the Zorg case as a prime example of its brutality. Olaudah Equiano saw the letter and brought it to the abolitionist Granville Sharp, who petitioned for a new trial. At the subsequent hearing, the events on the Zorg were examined in forensic detail, exactly what the abolitionists had hoped for.
The Road to 1807
In the spring of 1787, the initial group of the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade convened. Over the following years, they wrote letters, orated, lobbied tirelessly, and gathered evidence on the realities of the slave trade. “Their efforts,” Kara writes, “would lay a blueprint for the pursuit of social justice.” After years of setbacks, the Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade was enacted in 1807.
A Lasting Legacy
The debate over who or what should be credited for abolition remains a matter of debate. The Zorg's legacy, 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 widespread in human history, its abolition following a prolonged mass campaign was historic, serving as an affirmation to the power of persistent activism, the pen, and relentless determination.
The Author's Approach
In contrast to his previous books—such as the Pulitzer finalist 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 slightly hybrid feel. Part thriller and part historical analysis, The Zorg ultimately manages to illuminating one of history's darkest chapters, using compelling prose and meticulous research to assemble a account that haunts the reader well after the final page.
