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Over the course of nearly four hundred years, 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 individuals perished during the Middle Passage, subjected to scarcely imaginable conditions of extreme confinement, squalor, and disease. Many took their own lives by leaping overboard, while others were callously thrown 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 enslaved Africans 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 committed campaigners. Among them was Olaudah Equiano, who authored one of the rare first-person narratives of the Middle Passage, calling it “a scene of horror almost inconceivable”.

Liverpool's Central Role

The account originates in Liverpool, a port city that at the peak of its prosperity was accountable for 40% of Europe's slave trade. Investing in slavery was a lucrative venture for everyone from the wealthy to the working classes. One such investor, William Gregson, accumulated his wages from rope-making, ploughed them into the slave trade, and eventually became 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 hold was loaded 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.

The Capture of the Zorg

Around the same time, 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 seize Dutch ships at sea—a de facto 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 fleeing British governor named Robert Stubbs, who had been expelled for graft.

A Voyage into Hell

When Hanley reached Cape Coast Castle—a stronghold with a vast holding cell beneath it—he took command of the captured Zorg. He then severely overcrowd it with captives, put a dozen of his own crew on board, and made Luke Collingwood, a ship's surgeon of questionable seamanship, its captain. In August 1781, the Zorg left Accra carrying 442 captives, 17 crew members, and one notorious passenger: the former governor, Robert Stubbs.

Kara is particularly skilled at using contemporaneous sources to vividly reconstruct the general hell of being trafficked on a slave ship.

The Zorg's journey was fraught with disaster. Dysentery swept through the vessel, followed by scurvy. The captain fell ill, lost his senses, and appointed Stubbs. Thus, “a ship full of decay and death was being commanded by a passenger.” Kara effectively employs period testimonies 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.

The Unspeakable Decision

By late November 1781, the Zorg was still far from Jamaica and critically 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 ensuring survival—the Africans had pleaded to be allowed to live, even without water rations—but by pure economic greed. Maritime insurance policies did not cover deaths from disease, but they would pay for 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.

Insurance and Injustice

Back in Liverpool, investor William Gregson was unhappy about the financial return on his investment. He filed an insurance claim for £30 per lost slave—a substantial 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 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.” Merely twelve days after the trial, an published essay appeared in a prominent 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 brutality. Olaudah Equiano read 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, exactly 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 first met. Over the subsequent years, they petitioned, 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 finally passed in 1807.

An Enduring Impact

The question of who or what deserves credit for abolition remains a matter of debate. 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 near-universal in human history, its abolition following a prolonged public movement was historic, serving as an testament to the power of moral courage, the pen, and unwavering determination.

Kara's Narrative Method

In contrast to his previous books—such as the Pulitzer finalist Cobalt Red—Kara has had to fill in certain gaps in the available documentation. At times, speculative passages contrast with scrupulously factual accounts, giving the book a slightly chimeric feel. Part thriller and part serious nonfiction, The Zorg ultimately manages to shedding light on one of history's most horrific episodes, using powerful storytelling and meticulous research to create a portrait that stays with the reader well after the final page.