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Over the course of nearly four centuries, the transatlantic slave trade resulted in 12.5 million Africans forcibly taken from their homelands to the Americas. A devastating 1.8 million of those individuals perished during the Middle Passage, subjected to unfathomable conditions of overcrowding, squalor, and disease. Many took their own lives by throwing themselves overboard, whereas still more were forcibly cast into the sea.

A Tale of Two Stories

In The Zorg, author Siddharth Kara weaves together two parallel narratives. The first details a harrowing incident aboard the namesake slave ship—the systematic drowning of 132 enslaved Africans 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 committed campaigners. Among them was Olaudah Equiano, who wrote one of the few surviving first-person narratives of the Middle Passage, calling it “a scene of horror almost inconceivable”.

The Roots in Liverpool

The tale originates in Liverpool, a port city that at the height of its economic power was responsible for 40% of Europe's slave trafficking. Financing slavery was a lucrative venture for not just the elites to the common people. One such entrepreneur, William Gregson, saved up his earnings from rope-making, invested them into the slave trade, and rose to become a wealthy burgher and later 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 various “India goods” such as chintz and cowrie shells—the shells being a standard rate in the purchase of enslaved people.

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 at war with the Dutch in late 1780, the Royal Navy granted British ships authority to capture Dutch property at sea—a virtual license for privateering. The Zorg was subsequently taken by a British captain and anchored off the Gold Coast. Meanwhile, Captain Hanley, on a slaving expedition, picked up a fleeing British governor named Robert Stubbs, who had been expelled for corruption.

The Nightmare Passage

When Hanley arrived at Cape Coast Castle—a fortress with a vast slave dungeon beneath it—he assumed control of the captured Zorg. He proceeded to grossly overload it with enslaved people, placed 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 finally left Accra carrying 442 enslaved Africans, 17 crew members, and one depraved passenger: the former governor, Robert Stubbs.

Kara excels in using contemporaneous sources to bring to life the general hell of being transported on a slave ship.

The Zorg's journey was plagued with calamity. "The flux" ravaged the vessel, and then scurvy. The captain succumbed to sickness, became delirious, and appointed Stubbs. Thus, “a ship full of decay and death was being commanded by a passenger.” Kara effectively employs eyewitness accounts to paint a picture of the unmitigated terror. The graphic testimony of Alexander Falconbridge, a ship's surgeon turned abolitionist, details how the captives' skin was frequently 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 miles from Jamaica and critically short on water. The crew resolved to throw overboard a number of the captives, who had already endured months of obscene conditions below deck. This monstrous act was not motivated by preserving life—the Africans had begged to be spared, 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 murdered “those Africans who would be worth less at auction”—the weak, the sick, along with 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 venture. He filed an insurance claim for £30 per lost slave—a considerable sum in today's money. The insurers declined to pay. In March 1783, Gregson sued and was awarded 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 published essay appeared in a widely read English newspaper. The author, who claimed to have been present the court proceedings, argued compellingly against slavery, citing the Zorg case as a key illustration of its brutality. Olaudah Equiano read the letter and took it to the activist Granville Sharp, who filed a motion for a new trial. At the following hearing, the events on the Zorg were reviewed in forensic detail, precisely what the abolitionists had hoped for.

A Sustained Campaign

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, made speeches, lobbied tirelessly, 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 setbacks, the Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade was finally passed in 1807.

An Enduring Impact

The question of who or what should be credited for abolition remains contentious. The Zorg's legacy, 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 prolonged public movement was historic, serving as an affirmation to the power of moral courage, the pen, and unwavering persistence.

Kara's Narrative Method

Unlike his other work—such as the acclaimed 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 somewhat hybrid feel. A blend of narrative suspense and part serious nonfiction, The Zorg ultimately manages to shedding light on one of history's most horrific episodes, using powerful storytelling and documented fact to assemble a account that haunts the reader well after the final page.