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Over the spanning nearly four centuries, 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, subjected to unfathomable conditions of overcrowding, squalor, and disease. Many took their own lives by throwing themselves overboard, while 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 chronicles a harrowing incident aboard the eponymous slave ship—the systematic drowning of 132 captive individuals by its British crew. The second story explores how this atrocity came to influence the ending of the Atlantic slave trade in 1807, driven in large part by the dedicated work of a coalition 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 responsible for 40% of Europe's slave trafficking. Investing in slavery was a lucrative venture for not just the wealthy but also the working classes. One such investor, William Gregson, accumulated his wages 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 set sail from Liverpool for West Africa in October 1780 under Captain Richard Hanley. Its cargo was filled 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 acquisition of enslaved people.

The Capture of the Zorg

Around the same time, 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 granted British ships permission to capture Dutch ships 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, during one of his voyages, took aboard a fleeing British governor named Robert Stubbs, who had been expelled for graft.

The Nightmare Passage

When Hanley arrived at Cape Coast Castle—a stronghold with a notorious holding cell beneath it—he took command of the captured Zorg. He then grossly overload it with enslaved people, 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 bring to life the collective nightmare of being transported on a slave ship.

The Zorg's journey was plagued with calamity. Dysentery swept through the vessel, and then scurvy. The captain fell ill, became delirious, 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 graphic testimony of Alexander Falconbridge, a doctor who became an activist, describes how the enslaved people's 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 far from Jamaica and critically short on water. The crew resolved to jettison a number of the captives, who had already suffered through months of appalling conditions below deck. This unspeakable act was not motivated by ensuring survival—the Africans had begged to be spared, even without water rations—but by pure economic greed. Maritime insurance policies did not cover losses from disease, but they did cover cargo discarded 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 financial return on his investment. He filed an insurance claim for £30 per drowned captive—a substantial sum in today's money. The insurers refused to pay. In March 1783, Gregson sued and was awarded 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, made a powerful case against slavery, citing the Zorg case as a prime example of its inherent evil. Olaudah Equiano read the letter and brought it to the activist Granville Sharp, who petitioned for a new trial. At the subsequent hearing, the events on the Zorg were examined in meticulous detail, precisely what the abolitionists had wanted.

A Sustained Campaign

In the spring of 1787, the founding members of the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade convened. Over the following years, they petitioned, made speeches, organized campaigns, and gathered evidence on 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 finally passed in 1807.

A Lasting Legacy

The debate over who or what deserves credit for abolition is a matter of debate. The Zorg's influence, however, is powerfully evident in 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 unprecedented, serving as an affirmation to the power of moral courage, the pen, and unwavering persistence.

Kara's Narrative Method

In contrast to his other work—such as the acclaimed Cobalt Red—Kara has had to fill in 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 historical analysis, The Zorg ultimately succeeds in illuminating one of history's most horrific episodes, using powerful storytelling and documented fact to create a account that haunts the reader long after the final page.