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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 continent to the Americas. A staggering 1.8 million of those individuals perished during the voyage, enduring unfathomable conditions of extreme confinement, squalor, and illness. Many chose to end their suffering by throwing themselves 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 chronicles a harrowing incident aboard the eponymous slave ship—the deliberate murder of 132 captive individuals by its British crew. The second story examines how this atrocity played a pivotal role in the ending of the Atlantic slave trade in 1807, thanks largely by the dedicated work of a coalition of abolitionist activists. Among them was Olaudah Equiano, who authored one of the few surviving first-person accounts of the Middle Passage, describing it as “a scene of horror almost inconceivable”.

The Roots in Liverpool

The account begins in Liverpool, a port city that at the height of its economic power was responsible for 40% of Europe's slave trafficking. Financing slavery was a lucrative venture for not just the elites to the common people. One such entrepreneur, William Gregson, accumulated his earnings from his trade, invested 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 trade goods like tobacco, firearms, knives, and various “India goods” such as chintz and cowrie shells—the shells being a common currency in the purchase of enslaved people.

The Capture of the Zorg

Concurrently, a Dutch slave vessel named the Zorg (later referred to by the British as the Zong) had left 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 virtual license for piracy. The Zorg was subsequently captured by a British captain and anchored off the Gold Coast. Meanwhile, Captain Hanley, on a slaving expedition, picked up a disgraced British governor named Robert Stubbs, who had been expelled for corruption.

A Voyage into Hell

When Hanley reached Cape Coast Castle—a stronghold with a notorious slave dungeon beneath it—he assumed control of the captured Zorg. He then grossly overload it with captives, put a dozen of his own crew on board, and appointed Luke Collingwood, a ship's surgeon of questionable seamanship, its captain. In August 1781, the Zorg finally left Accra carrying 442 captives, 17 crew members, and one notorious passenger: the former governor, Robert Stubbs.

Kara excels in using historical documents to vividly reconstruct the general hell of being trafficked on a slave ship.

The Zorg's journey was plagued with calamity. 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 masterfully utilizes eyewitness accounts to illustrate of the sheer horror. The graphic testimony of Alexander Falconbridge, a ship's surgeon turned abolitionist, describes how the captives' skin was frequently rubbed raw to the bone from being packed on bare wood, their flesh caught between the planks.

A Calculated Atrocity

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 endured months of appalling conditions below deck. This monstrous act was not motivated by preserving life—the Africans had begged to be allowed to live, even without water rations—but by pure economic greed. Ship insurance policies did not cover deaths from natural causes, but they would pay for cargo discarded 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, among them a baby born during the voyage.

The Courtroom Battle

Back in Liverpool, investor William Gregson was unhappy about 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 was awarded a trial by jury, with his lawyers arguing 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 anonymous letter appeared in a prominent English newspaper. The author, who claimed to have been present the court proceedings, argued compellingly against slavery, citing the Zorg case as a prime example of its inherent evil. Olaudah Equiano read the letter and took 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 forensic detail, precisely 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 convened. Over the subsequent years, they wrote letters, made speeches, 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 struggles, 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 contentious. The Zorg's legacy, 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 widespread 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 persistence.

Kara's Narrative Method

In contrast to his other work—such as the Pulitzer finalist Cobalt Red—Kara has had to address certain lacunae in the available documentation. At times, speculative passages contrast with scrupulously factual accounts, giving the book a somewhat chimeric feel. A blend of narrative suspense and part serious nonfiction, The Zorg nevertheless succeeds in shedding light on one of history's darkest chapters, using compelling prose and meticulous research to create a portrait that haunts the reader well after the final page.