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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 souls died during the voyage, subjected to scarcely imaginable conditions of overcrowding, filth, and disease. Some took their own lives by throwing themselves overboard, while still more were callously thrown into the sea.

A Tale of Two Stories

In The Zorg, author Siddharth Kara weaves together two interconnected narratives. The first details a harrowing incident aboard the eponymous 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 dazzling array 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 height of its prosperity was responsible for 40% of Europe's slave trafficking. Financing slavery was a highly profitable venture for everyone from the elites to the common people. One such investor, William Gregson, accumulated his earnings from his trade, ploughed them into the slave trade, and rose to become a prominent citizen and later mayor. Gregson financed 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 latter being a standard rate in the purchase of enslaved people.

A Ship Seized

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 authority to seize Dutch ships at sea—a de facto sanctioning of privateering. The Zorg was subsequently taken by a British captain and held off the Gold Coast. Meanwhile, Captain Hanley, on a slaving expedition, took aboard a disgraced British governor named Robert Stubbs, who had been removed for graft.

The Nightmare Passage

When Hanley arrived at Cape Coast Castle—a stronghold with a vast holding cell beneath it—he took command of the captured Zorg. He proceeded to 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 nautical skill, 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 bring to life the collective nightmare of being trafficked 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, 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 illustrate of the sheer horror. The powerful testimony of Alexander Falconbridge, a ship's surgeon turned abolitionist, details 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.

A Calculated Atrocity

By late November 1781, the Zorg was miles from Jamaica and critically short on water. The crew resolved to jettison 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 allowed to live, even without water rations—but by pure economic greed. Maritime insurance policies did not cover deaths from natural causes, but they did cover cargo jettisoned out of “necessity” for the ship's safety. Over a period of days, the crew murdered “those Africans who would be worth less at auction”—the infirm, the sick, including 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 filed an insurance claim for £30 per lost slave—a substantial sum in today's money. The insurers refused to pay. In March 1783, Gregson took them to court 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 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 read 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 wanted.

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 subsequent years, they wrote letters, made speeches, organized campaigns, 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 question of who or what deserves credit for abolition remains contentious. The Zorg's legacy, 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 sustained public movement was historic, serving as an affirmation to the power of persistent activism, the pen, and relentless persistence.

The Author's Approach

Unlike his previous books—such as the Pulitzer finalist Cobalt Red—Kara has had to fill in certain gaps in the historical record. At times, speculative passages sit awkwardly next to scrupulously factual accounts, giving the book a somewhat hybrid feel. A blend of narrative suspense and part serious nonfiction, The Zorg nevertheless manages to shedding light on one of history's most horrific episodes, using compelling prose and meticulous research to assemble a account that stays with the reader long after the final page.