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Over the spanning nearly four hundred years, the transatlantic slave trade resulted in 12.5 million Africans trafficked from their continent to the Americas. A staggering 1.8 million of those individuals perished during the Middle Passage, enduring scarcely imaginable conditions of extreme confinement, squalor, and disease. Some chose to end their suffering by leaping overboard, while still more were forcibly cast into the sea.

Two Interwoven Narratives

In The Zorg, author Siddharth Kara presents two interconnected narratives. The first details a horrific incident aboard the namesake slave ship—the deliberate murder 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, thanks largely by the relentless efforts of a dazzling array 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 peak of its economic power was responsible 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 entrepreneur, William Gregson, saved up his wages from rope-making, ploughed them into the slave trade, and rose to become a prominent citizen and even 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 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 acquisition of enslaved people.

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 left 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 virtual license for piracy. The Zorg was soon captured by a British captain and anchored off the Gold Coast. Meanwhile, Captain Hanley, during one of his voyages, 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 fortress with a notorious slave dungeon beneath it—he took command of the captured Zorg. He then severely overcrowd it with captives, placed 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 enslaved Africans, 17 crew members, and one notorious passenger: the former governor, Robert Stubbs.

Kara is particularly skilled at using contemporaneous sources to vividly reconstruct the collective nightmare of being transported on a slave ship.

The Zorg's journey was fraught with calamity. "The flux" 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 eyewitness accounts to illustrate of the sheer horror. The powerful testimony of Alexander Falconbridge, a doctor who became an activist, details how the enslaved people's skin was often rubbed raw to the bone from being packed on bare wood, their flesh pinched and torn between the planks.

A Calculated Atrocity

By late November 1781, the Zorg was still far from Jamaica and dangerously short on water. The crew resolved to jettison a number of the enslaved Africans, who had already suffered through months of obscene conditions below deck. This unspeakable 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. Ship insurance policies did not cover deaths from disease, but they did cover cargo jettisoned 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.

The Courtroom Battle

Back in Liverpool, investor William Gregson was dissatisfied with the profit 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 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 widely read 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 key illustration of its inherent evil. Olaudah Equiano read the letter and brought it to the activist 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 hoped for.

The Road to 1807

In the spring of 1787, the initial group of the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade first met. Over the following years, they petitioned, orated, 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 question of who or what should be credited for abolition is contentious. The Zorg's legacy, however, is powerfully 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 sustained mass campaign was historic, serving as an affirmation to the power of persistent activism, the pen, and unwavering determination.

The Author's Approach

In contrast to his other work—such as the acclaimed Cobalt Red—Kara has had to address certain lacunae in the historical record. Consequently, speculative passages contrast with rigorously researched accounts, giving the book a slightly chimeric feel. A blend of narrative suspense and part historical analysis, The Zorg nevertheless manages to shedding light on 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.