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Over the course of nearly four hundred years, the transatlantic slave trade resulted in 12.5 million Africans forcibly taken from their continent to the Americas. A devastating 1.8 million of those individuals perished during the Middle Passage, enduring unfathomable conditions of overcrowding, squalor, and illness. Many chose to end their suffering by throwing themselves overboard, whereas still more were forcibly cast 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 eponymous slave ship—the deliberate murder of 132 captive individuals by its British crew. The second story examines how this event played a pivotal role in 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 authored one of the rare first-person narratives of the Middle Passage, calling it “a scene of horror almost inconceivable”.

Liverpool's Central Role

The account originates in Liverpool, a port city that at the peak of its economic power was accountable for 40% of Europe's slave trade. Financing slavery was a lucrative venture for not just the elites 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 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 hold 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 purchase of enslaved people.

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 authority to capture Dutch property at sea—a de facto 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 expelled for graft.

The Nightmare Passage

When Hanley reached Cape Coast Castle—a fortress with a notorious slave dungeon beneath it—he took command of the captured Zorg. He proceeded to grossly overload it with enslaved people, placed 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 enslaved Africans, 17 crew members, and one notorious passenger: the former governor, Robert Stubbs.

Kara excels in using historical documents to vividly reconstruct the collective nightmare of being trafficked on a slave ship.

The Zorg's journey was fraught with disaster. 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 illustrate of the unmitigated terror. The graphic testimony of Alexander Falconbridge, a ship's surgeon turned abolitionist, describes how the captives' skin was often rubbed raw to the bone from being packed on bare wood, their flesh caught between the planks.

A Calculated Atrocity

By late November 1781, the Zorg was still far from Jamaica and dangerously short on water. The crew made the decision to jettison a number of the enslaved Africans, who had already endured 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 pure 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 several days, the crew murdered “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 financial return on his investment. He filed an insurance claim for £30 per drowned captive—a substantial sum in today's money. The insurers declined to pay. In March 1783, Gregson took them to court and won 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.” Just 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, citing the Zorg case as a key illustration of its brutality. Olaudah Equiano saw the letter and took it to the abolitionist 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 petitioned, made speeches, 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 enacted 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 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 persistent activism, the pen, and unwavering determination.

Kara's Narrative Method

In contrast to his previous books—such as the acclaimed Cobalt Red—Kara has had to address certain gaps in the historical record. Consequently, imaginative flourishes contrast with rigorously researched accounts, giving the book a somewhat chimeric feel. Part thriller and part historical analysis, The Zorg ultimately succeeds in illuminating one of history's most horrific episodes, using compelling prose and documented fact to assemble a portrait that haunts the reader well after the final page.