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Over the spanning nearly four hundred years, the Atlantic slave trafficking system saw 12.5 million Africans forcibly taken from their continent to the Americas. A devastating 1.8 million of those souls died during the Middle Passage, subjected to scarcely imaginable conditions of overcrowding, squalor, and disease. Many chose to end their suffering by leaping overboard, while others were forcibly cast into the sea.

A Tale of Two Stories

In The Zorg, author Siddharth Kara presents two interconnected narratives. The first chronicles 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 abolition 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 wrote one of the rare first-person accounts of the Middle Passage, describing it as “a scene of horror almost inconceivable”.

Liverpool's Central Role

The account begins in Liverpool, a port city that at the peak of its economic power was responsible 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 rope-making, ploughed them into the slave trade, and eventually became a wealthy burgher 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 cargo was filled with trade goods like tobacco, firearms, knives, and various “India goods” such as chintz and cowrie shells—the latter being a common currency in the acquisition of enslaved people.

A Ship Seized

Concurrently, a Dutch slave vessel named the Zorg (later anglicized by the British as the Zong) had left the Netherlands. With Britain declaring war on the Dutch in late 1780, the Royal Navy granted British ships permission to seize Dutch property at sea—a virtual sanctioning of piracy. The Zorg was soon taken by a British captain and anchored off the Gold Coast. Meanwhile, Captain Hanley, during one of his voyages, took aboard a fleeing British governor named Robert Stubbs, who had been removed 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 proceeded to grossly overload it with captives, put a dozen of his own crew on board, and made Luke Collingwood, a ship's surgeon of questionable nautical skill, 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 general hell of being trafficked on a slave ship.

The Zorg's journey was fraught with calamity. "The flux" ravaged the vessel, followed by scurvy. The captain succumbed to sickness, lost his senses, 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 paint a picture of the sheer horror. The graphic testimony of Alexander Falconbridge, a doctor who became an activist, details how the enslaved people's skin was often worn down to the bone from lying 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 made the decision to jettison a number of the enslaved Africans, 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 allowed to live, even without water rations—but by cold economic greed. Maritime insurance policies did not cover deaths from natural causes, but they would pay for 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, including women and children, among them 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 submitted 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 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 prominent English newspaper. The author, who claimed to have been present 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 filed a motion for a new trial. At the subsequent hearing, the events on the Zorg were examined in forensic detail, exactly what the abolitionists had wanted.

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 subsequent years, they wrote letters, orated, lobbied tirelessly, and meticulously documented 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 deserves credit for abolition remains contentious. The Zorg's legacy, however, is powerfully captured by 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 testament to the power of persistent activism, the pen, and relentless determination.

The Author's Approach

In contrast to his previous books—such as the Pulitzer finalist Cobalt Red—Kara has had to fill in certain gaps in the historical record. Consequently, speculative passages contrast with rigorously researched accounts, giving the book a somewhat chimeric feel. Part thriller and part serious nonfiction, The Zorg nevertheless succeeds in shedding light on one of history's darkest chapters, using compelling prose and meticulous research to create a account that stays with the reader well after the final page.