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Over the spanning nearly four centuries, the Atlantic slave trafficking system saw 12.5 million Africans forcibly taken from their homelands to the Americas. A staggering 1.8 million of those souls died during the voyage, subjected to unfathomable conditions of overcrowding, filth, and disease. Many took their own lives by throwing themselves overboard, while others were forcibly cast into the sea.

Two Interwoven Narratives

In The Zorg, author Siddharth Kara weaves together two parallel narratives. The first details a horrific incident aboard the eponymous slave ship—the systematic drowning of 132 enslaved Africans by its British crew. The second story explores how this event came to influence the ending of the Atlantic slave trade in 1807, driven in large part by the dedicated work of a dazzling array of abolitionist activists. Among them was Olaudah Equiano, who authored one of the rare first-person accounts of the Middle Passage, calling it “a scene of horror almost inconceivable”.

The Roots in Liverpool

The tale begins in Liverpool, a port city that at the height of its economic power was accountable for 40% of Europe's slave trafficking. Investing in slavery was a highly profitable venture for not just the wealthy but also the working classes. One such investor, William Gregson, saved up his earnings from his trade, ploughed them into the slave trade, and rose to become a prominent citizen and later 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 hold was filled with commodities like tobacco, firearms, knives, and so-called “India goods” such as chintz and cowrie shells—the shells being a standard rate in the purchase of human beings.

A Ship Seized

Concurrently, a Dutch slave vessel named the Zorg (later referred to by the British as the Zong) had left the Netherlands. With Britain at war with the Dutch in late 1780, the Royal Navy gave British ships permission to capture Dutch property at sea—a virtual sanctioning of piracy. The Zorg was subsequently taken by a British captain and anchored off the Gold Coast. Meanwhile, Captain Hanley, during one of his voyages, 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 fortress with a notorious slave dungeon beneath it—he assumed control of the captured Zorg. He proceeded to grossly overload it with enslaved people, put a dozen of his own crew on board, and appointed Luke Collingwood, a ship's surgeon of dubious seamanship, 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 vividly reconstruct the collective nightmare of being transported on a slave ship.

The Zorg's journey was fraught with calamity. Dysentery swept through the vessel, and then scurvy. The captain succumbed to sickness, became delirious, and handed command over to Stubbs. Thus, “a ship full of decay and death was being commanded by a passenger.” Kara masterfully utilizes eyewitness accounts to illustrate of the unmitigated terror. The graphic testimony of Alexander Falconbridge, a doctor who became an activist, details how the captives' skin was often rubbed raw 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 still miles from Jamaica and critically short on water. The crew resolved to throw overboard 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 pleaded 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 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, among them a baby born during the voyage.

The Courtroom Battle

Back in Liverpool, investor William Gregson was dissatisfied with the profit on his investment. 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 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 prominent English newspaper. The author, who claimed to have been present the court proceedings, made a powerful case against slavery, citing 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 filed a motion for a new trial. At the following hearing, the events on the Zorg were examined in meticulous detail, precisely what the abolitionists had wanted.

The Road to 1807

In the spring of 1787, the founding members of the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade convened. Over the subsequent years, they petitioned, orated, lobbied tirelessly, 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 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 historic, serving as an affirmation to the power of persistent activism, the pen, and unwavering determination.

The Author's Approach

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 contrast with scrupulously factual accounts, giving the book a somewhat hybrid feel. Part thriller and part serious nonfiction, The Zorg nevertheless manages to illuminating one of history's most horrific episodes, using compelling prose and meticulous research to assemble a portrait that haunts the reader well after the final page.