The Zorg by Siddharth Kara: An Examination of Scarcely Imaginable Horrors at Sea

Over the course of nearly four centuries, the transatlantic slave trade resulted in 12.5 million Africans trafficked from their homelands to the Americas. A devastating 1.8 million of those individuals perished during the Middle Passage, subjected to unfathomable conditions of overcrowding, filth, and illness. Some 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 weaves together two parallel narratives. The first details a horrific 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 wrote 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 begins in Liverpool, a port city that at the peak of its prosperity was responsible for 40% of Europe's slave trade. Financing slavery was a highly profitable venture for everyone from the wealthy but also the common people. One such investor, William Gregson, accumulated his wages from rope-making, invested 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 hold was loaded with commodities like tobacco, firearms, knives, and various “India goods” such as chintz and cowrie shells—the shells being a common currency in the acquisition 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 declaring war on the Dutch in late 1780, the Royal Navy granted British ships authority to seize Dutch ships at sea—a de facto 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, picked up a disgraced British governor named Robert Stubbs, who had been expelled for graft.

The Nightmare Passage

When Hanley reached Cape Coast Castle—a fortress with a notorious holding cell beneath it—he took command of the captured Zorg. He then grossly overload it with captives, 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 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 trafficked on a slave ship.

The Zorg's journey was plagued with disaster. Dysentery ravaged the vessel, followed by 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 effectively employs period testimonies to illustrate of the sheer horror. The graphic testimony of Alexander Falconbridge, a doctor who became an activist, describes how the enslaved people's skin was often worn down to the bone from being packed on bare wood, their flesh caught between the planks.

The Unspeakable Decision

By late November 1781, the Zorg was still miles 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 cold economic greed. Ship insurance policies did not cover losses from natural causes, but they would pay for cargo discarded 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 profit on his investment. He submitted 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 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.” 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 key illustration of its inherent evil. Olaudah Equiano read the letter and took it to the activist Granville Sharp, who petitioned for a new trial. At the following hearing, the events on the Zorg were reviewed 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, made speeches, organized campaigns, 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 deserves credit 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 prolonged public movement was unprecedented, serving as an affirmation to the power of persistent activism, the pen, and relentless persistence.

The Author's Approach

In contrast to his other work—such as the acclaimed Cobalt Red—Kara has had to fill in certain gaps in the available documentation. Consequently, imaginative flourishes sit awkwardly next to rigorously researched accounts, giving the book a slightly chimeric feel. A blend of narrative suspense and part serious nonfiction, The Zorg ultimately succeeds in shedding light on one of history's most horrific episodes, using powerful storytelling and meticulous research to create a account that stays with the reader well after the final page.