Siddharth Kara's The Zorg: An Examination of Almost Unthinkable Horrors at Sea

Over the spanning nearly four hundred years, the transatlantic slave trade saw 12.5 million Africans forcibly taken from their homelands to the Americas. A staggering 1.8 million of those individuals died during the voyage, enduring unfathomable conditions of extreme confinement, filth, and illness. Many chose to end their suffering by leaping overboard, whereas others were callously thrown 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 systematic drowning 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 relentless efforts of a coalition of committed campaigners. Among them was Olaudah Equiano, who wrote one of the rare 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 prosperity was responsible for 40% of Europe's slave trade. Investing in slavery was a lucrative venture for not just the wealthy but also the working classes. One such entrepreneur, William Gregson, saved up his wages from his trade, ploughed them into the slave trade, and eventually became a wealthy burgher and even mayor. Gregson provided the funds for the slave ship The William, which departed from Liverpool for West Africa in October 1780 under Captain Richard Hanley. Its cargo 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 enslaved people.

A Ship Seized

Concurrently, a Dutch slave vessel named the Zorg (later referred to 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 permission to seize Dutch ships at sea—a de facto sanctioning of piracy. The Zorg was subsequently taken 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 removed for corruption.

The Nightmare Passage

When Hanley reached Cape Coast Castle—a stronghold with a vast 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 questionable nautical skill, its captain. In August 1781, the Zorg left Accra carrying 442 enslaved Africans, 17 crew members, and one notorious passenger: the former governor, Robert Stubbs.

Kara excels in using contemporaneous sources to vividly reconstruct the collective nightmare of being trafficked on a slave ship.

The Zorg's journey was fraught with disaster. Dysentery swept through the vessel, and then 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 effectively employs period testimonies to paint a picture of the sheer horror. 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 lying on bare wood, their flesh pinched and torn between the planks.

A Calculated Atrocity

By late November 1781, the Zorg was far from Jamaica and dangerously short on water. The crew made the decision to jettison a number of the enslaved Africans, who had already endured months of appalling 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 deaths from natural causes, but they did cover cargo discarded out of “necessity” for the ship's safety. Over a period of days, the crew murdered “those Africans who would be worth less at auction”—the weak, the sick, including women and children, among them a baby born during the voyage.

Insurance and Injustice

Back in Liverpool, investor William Gregson was unhappy about the financial return on his venture. He filed an insurance claim for £30 per drowned captive—a considerable 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.”

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, argued compellingly against slavery, citing the Zorg case as a key illustration of its brutality. Olaudah Equiano saw the letter and took 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 meticulous detail, precisely what the abolitionists had hoped for.

A Sustained Campaign

In the spring of 1787, the initial group of the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade first met. Over the subsequent years, they petitioned, orated, 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 debate over who or what deserves credit for abolition remains 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 prolonged mass campaign was historic, serving as an affirmation to the power of persistent activism, the pen, and relentless persistence.

Kara's Narrative Method

Unlike his previous books—such as the acclaimed Cobalt Red—Kara has had to fill in certain lacunae in the available documentation. At times, imaginative flourishes contrast with rigorously researched accounts, giving the book a slightly hybrid feel. A blend of narrative suspense and part historical analysis, The Zorg nevertheless manages to illuminating one of history's darkest chapters, using powerful storytelling and documented fact to assemble a portrait that stays with the reader long after the final page.