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Over the spanning nearly four hundred years, the transatlantic slave trade saw 12.5 million Africans trafficked from their homelands to the Americas. A devastating 1.8 million of those souls perished during the voyage, subjected to unfathomable conditions of overcrowding, squalor, and disease. Many chose to end their suffering by throwing themselves overboard, while others were callously thrown into the sea.

Two Interwoven Narratives

In The Zorg, author Siddharth Kara weaves together two parallel narratives. The first chronicles a harrowing incident aboard the namesake slave ship—the deliberate murder of 132 enslaved Africans by its British crew. The second story examines how this atrocity came to influence the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade in 1807, driven in large part by the dedicated work of a dazzling array of committed campaigners. Among them was Olaudah Equiano, who wrote one of the few surviving first-person accounts 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 trafficking. Investing in slavery was a lucrative venture for everyone from the wealthy but also the common people. One such investor, William Gregson, accumulated his wages from his trade, ploughed them into the slave trade, and rose to become a prominent citizen and even 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 loaded with trade goods like tobacco, firearms, knives, and various “India goods” such as chintz and cowrie shells—the shells being a standard rate in the purchase of enslaved people.

The Capture of the Zorg

Concurrently, 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 permission to capture Dutch property at sea—a de facto license for privateering. The Zorg was soon captured by a British captain and anchored off the Gold Coast. Meanwhile, Captain Hanley, on a slaving expedition, took aboard a fleeing British governor named Robert Stubbs, who had been removed for graft.

A Voyage into Hell

When Hanley arrived at Cape Coast Castle—a stronghold with a notorious holding cell beneath it—he assumed control of the captured Zorg. He then severely overcrowd it with enslaved people, put a dozen of his own crew on board, and appointed 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 historical documents to vividly reconstruct the general hell of being trafficked on a slave ship.

The Zorg's journey was fraught with disaster. "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 effectively employs eyewitness accounts to paint a picture of the unmitigated terror. The powerful testimony of Alexander Falconbridge, a doctor who became an activist, details how the captives' skin was frequently rubbed raw 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 resolved to throw overboard a number of the enslaved Africans, who had already suffered through months of appalling conditions below deck. This monstrous 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 losses from disease, but they did cover cargo discarded out of “necessity” for the ship's safety. Over several days, the crew drowned “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 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 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.” Merely twelve days after the trial, an published essay appeared in a widely read English newspaper. The author, who claimed to have attended the court proceedings, made a powerful case against slavery, citing the Zorg case as a prime example 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 following hearing, the events on the Zorg were reviewed in meticulous detail, precisely 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 following years, they petitioned, made speeches, lobbied tirelessly, 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 setbacks, the Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade was enacted in 1807.

An Enduring Impact

The question of who or what should be credited for abolition is contentious. The Zorg's influence, however, is visibly evident in 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 unprecedented, serving as an testament to the power of persistent activism, the pen, and unwavering determination.

Kara's Narrative Method

In contrast to his other work—such as the acclaimed Cobalt Red—Kara has had to address certain lacunae in the historical record. Consequently, imaginative flourishes contrast with rigorously researched accounts, giving the book a slightly chimeric feel. A blend of narrative suspense and part historical analysis, The Zorg nevertheless succeeds in illuminating one of history's most horrific episodes, using compelling prose and documented fact to create a account that stays with the reader long after the final page.