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Over the course of nearly four hundred years, the Atlantic slave trafficking system saw 12.5 million Africans trafficked from their continent to the Americas. A staggering 1.8 million of those individuals perished during the Middle Passage, enduring scarcely imaginable conditions of overcrowding, squalor, and disease. Some took their own lives by leaping overboard, while others were forcibly cast into the sea.

Two Interwoven Narratives

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 examines how this atrocity came to influence the ending of the Atlantic slave trade in 1807, thanks largely by the relentless efforts of a coalition of abolitionist activists. Among them was Olaudah Equiano, who wrote one of the rare first-person narratives of the Middle Passage, describing it as “a scene of horror almost inconceivable”.

The Roots in Liverpool

The account begins 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 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 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 cargo was loaded 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 human beings.

The Capture of the Zorg

Concurrently, a Dutch slave vessel named the Zorg (later anglicized by the British as the Zong) had departed 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 sanctioning of privateering. The Zorg was soon captured by a British captain and held off the Gold Coast. Meanwhile, Captain Hanley, on a slaving expedition, 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 holding cell beneath it—he assumed control of the captured Zorg. He proceeded to grossly overload it with captives, 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 notorious passenger: the former governor, Robert Stubbs.

Kara excels in using contemporaneous sources to vividly reconstruct the general hell of being trafficked on a slave ship.

The Zorg's journey was plagued with calamity. Dysentery ravaged the vessel, followed by scurvy. The captain fell ill, lost his senses, and appointed Stubbs. Thus, “a ship full of decay and death was being commanded by a passenger.” Kara masterfully utilizes period testimonies to paint a picture of the sheer horror. The powerful testimony of Alexander Falconbridge, a doctor who became an activist, describes how the captives' skin was often worn down to the bone from lying 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 dangerously short on water. The crew resolved to throw overboard a number of the enslaved Africans, who had already suffered through 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. Maritime insurance policies did not cover losses from disease, but they did cover cargo jettisoned 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 infirm, the sick, including women and children, even a baby born during the voyage.

Insurance and Injustice

Back in Liverpool, investor William Gregson was dissatisfied with the profit on his venture. He submitted an insurance claim for £30 per drowned captive—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.”

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 anonymous letter appeared in a widely read English newspaper. The author, who claimed to have attended the court proceedings, made a powerful case against slavery, using the Zorg case as a key illustration of its brutality. Olaudah Equiano saw the letter and brought 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, exactly what the abolitionists had hoped for.

The Road to 1807

In the spring of 1787, the founding members of the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade first met. Over the subsequent years, they wrote letters, 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 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 widespread in human history, its abolition following a sustained public movement was unprecedented, serving as an affirmation to the power of moral courage, the pen, and relentless persistence.

The Author's Approach

Unlike his previous books—such as the acclaimed Cobalt Red—Kara has had to address certain lacunae in the available documentation. At times, speculative passages sit awkwardly next to rigorously researched accounts, giving the book a somewhat hybrid feel. A blend of narrative suspense and part serious nonfiction, The Zorg nevertheless manages to illuminating one of history's most horrific episodes, using compelling prose and documented fact to create a account that stays with the reader well after the final page.