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Over the course of nearly four centuries, the Atlantic slave trafficking system saw 12.5 million Africans trafficked from their homelands to the Americas. A staggering 1.8 million of those individuals perished during the Middle Passage, enduring scarcely imaginable conditions of overcrowding, squalor, and illness. Some took their own lives by throwing themselves overboard, whereas still more were callously thrown into the sea.

A Tale of Two Stories

In The Zorg, author Siddharth Kara weaves together two parallel narratives. The first details 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 came to influence the ending of the Atlantic slave trade in 1807, thanks largely 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 economic power was responsible for 40% of Europe's slave trade. Financing slavery was a lucrative venture for not just the wealthy to the common people. One such entrepreneur, William Gregson, saved up his wages from rope-making, ploughed them into the slave trade, and eventually became a prominent citizen and later mayor. Gregson financed 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 trade goods like tobacco, firearms, knives, and so-called “India goods” such as chintz and cowrie shells—the latter 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 piracy. The Zorg was soon captured by a British captain and held off the Gold Coast. Meanwhile, Captain Hanley, on a slaving expedition, 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 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 enslaved Africans, 17 crew members, and one depraved 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, lost his senses, and handed command over to Stubbs. Thus, “a ship full of decay and death was being commanded by a passenger.” Kara effectively employs eyewitness accounts to illustrate of the unmitigated terror. 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 being packed on bare wood, their flesh pinched and torn between the planks.

The Unspeakable Decision

By late November 1781, the Zorg was still miles from Jamaica and critically short on water. The crew made the decision to throw overboard a number of the captives, who had already suffered through months of obscene 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 cold economic greed. Ship insurance policies did not cover deaths from natural causes, but they did cover 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, 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 financial return on his investment. He filed an insurance claim for £30 per lost slave—a substantial sum in today's money. The insurers refused 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.”

Catalyzing the Movement

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 attended the court proceedings, made a powerful case against slavery, using the Zorg case as a prime example of its inherent evil. Olaudah Equiano read the letter and brought 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.

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 enacted in 1807.

A Lasting Legacy

The question of who or what should be credited for abolition is 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 based on the events of 1781. While slavery has been near-universal 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 persistence.

The Author's Approach

Unlike his previous books—such as the Pulitzer finalist Cobalt Red—Kara has had to address certain gaps in the historical record. At times, speculative passages sit awkwardly next to rigorously researched accounts, giving the book a somewhat hybrid feel. A blend of narrative suspense and part historical analysis, The Zorg ultimately manages to shedding light on one of history's most horrific episodes, using compelling prose and meticulous research to assemble a portrait that stays with the reader well after the final page.