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Over the spanning nearly four hundred years, the Atlantic slave trafficking system saw 12.5 million Africans trafficked from their homelands to the Americas. A staggering 1.8 million of those souls died during the voyage, enduring scarcely imaginable conditions of extreme confinement, squalor, and illness. Some took their own lives by leaping overboard, while still more were callously thrown into the sea.

Two Interwoven Narratives

In The Zorg, author Siddharth Kara presents two parallel narratives. The first chronicles a horrific incident aboard the namesake slave ship—the deliberate murder of 132 enslaved Africans by its British crew. The second story explores how this event played a pivotal role in the ending of the Atlantic slave trade in 1807, driven in large part by the relentless efforts of a coalition of abolitionist activists. Among them was Olaudah Equiano, who authored one of the few surviving first-person narratives of the Middle Passage, calling it “a scene of horror almost inconceivable”.

Liverpool's Central Role

The tale originates in Liverpool, a port city that at the peak of its economic power was responsible for 40% of Europe's slave trafficking. Investing in slavery was a highly profitable venture for not just the elites to the common people. One such investor, William Gregson, saved up his wages from rope-making, ploughed them into the slave trade, and eventually became a wealthy burgher and even 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 filled with commodities like tobacco, firearms, knives, and various “India goods” such as chintz and cowrie shells—the latter being a common currency in the purchase of human beings.

A Ship Seized

Concurrently, a Dutch slave vessel named the Zorg (later anglicized by the British as the Zong) had departed the Netherlands. With Britain declaring war on the Dutch in late 1780, the Royal Navy gave British ships permission to seize Dutch ships at sea—a virtual sanctioning of privateering. The Zorg was soon taken 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.

The Nightmare Passage

When Hanley reached Cape Coast Castle—a stronghold with a vast holding cell beneath it—he assumed control of the captured Zorg. He proceeded to severely overcrowd it with captives, put a dozen of his own crew on board, and made Luke Collingwood, a ship's surgeon of dubious seamanship, 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 vividly reconstruct the collective nightmare of being transported on a slave ship.

The Zorg's journey was plagued with disaster. "The flux" ravaged the vessel, and then 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 illustrate of the sheer horror. The graphic testimony of Alexander Falconbridge, a ship's surgeon turned abolitionist, describes how the captives' skin was often 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 still far from Jamaica and dangerously short on water. The crew resolved to throw overboard a number of the captives, who had already suffered through months of appalling conditions below deck. This monstrous 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 deaths from disease, but they would pay for cargo discarded 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, along with women and children, even 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 considerable 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.” Just twelve days after the trial, an published essay 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 inherent evil. Olaudah Equiano saw the letter and took it to the abolitionist Granville Sharp, who petitioned for a new trial. At the subsequent hearing, the events on the Zorg were reviewed 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 first met. Over the subsequent years, they wrote letters, orated, organized campaigns, and meticulously documented the realities 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.

A Lasting Legacy

The debate over who or what should be credited for abolition is a matter of debate. The Zorg's influence, however, is powerfully captured by J.M.W. Turner's famous painting, The Slave Ship, which was based on the events of 1781. While slavery has been widespread in human history, its abolition following a sustained mass campaign was historic, serving as an affirmation to the power of persistent activism, the pen, and relentless persistence.

The Author's Approach

In contrast to his other work—such as the acclaimed Cobalt Red—Kara has had to fill in certain lacunae in the available documentation. Consequently, speculative passages sit awkwardly next to scrupulously factual accounts, giving the book a slightly chimeric feel. A blend of narrative suspense and part serious nonfiction, The Zorg ultimately manages to shedding light on one of history's darkest chapters, using compelling prose and meticulous research to create a portrait that stays with the reader long after the final page.