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Over the course of nearly four hundred years, the transatlantic slave trade resulted in 12.5 million Africans forcibly taken from their continent to the Americas. A devastating 1.8 million of those souls perished during the voyage, enduring unfathomable conditions of extreme confinement, filth, and disease. Many took their own lives by leaping overboard, whereas others were forcibly cast into the sea.

Two Interwoven Narratives

In The Zorg, author Siddharth Kara presents two interconnected narratives. The first chronicles a horrific incident aboard the eponymous slave ship—the deliberate murder of 132 captive individuals by its British crew. The second story explores how this atrocity played a pivotal role in the abolition 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 few surviving first-person accounts of the Middle Passage, describing it as “a scene of horror almost inconceivable”.

Liverpool's Central Role

The account 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 elites to the working classes. One such investor, William Gregson, saved up his wages from rope-making, ploughed them into the slave trade, and eventually became a wealthy burgher 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 filled with trade goods like tobacco, firearms, knives, and so-called “India goods” such as chintz and cowrie shells—the shells being a standard rate 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 left the Netherlands. With Britain declaring war on the Dutch in late 1780, the Royal Navy granted British ships permission to capture Dutch ships 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 disgraced British governor named Robert Stubbs, who had been removed for graft.

A Voyage into Hell

When Hanley arrived at Cape Coast Castle—a fortress with a vast slave dungeon beneath it—he assumed control of the captured Zorg. He proceeded to grossly overload 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 finally left Accra carrying 442 captives, 17 crew members, and one notorious passenger: the former governor, Robert Stubbs.

Kara is particularly skilled at using contemporaneous sources to bring to life the general hell of being trafficked on a slave ship.

The Zorg's journey was plagued with calamity. Dysentery ravaged 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 period testimonies to illustrate of the unmitigated terror. The graphic testimony of Alexander Falconbridge, a doctor who became an activist, describes how the enslaved people's skin was frequently 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 far from Jamaica and critically 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 preserving life—the Africans had pleaded to be spared, even without water rations—but by pure economic greed. Ship insurance policies did not cover losses from disease, but they would pay for 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 unhappy about the profit on his venture. He filed an insurance claim for £30 per drowned captive—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.”

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.” Just 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, using 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 petitioned for a new trial. At the following hearing, the events on the Zorg were examined in forensic detail, precisely what the abolitionists had hoped for.

A Sustained Campaign

In the spring of 1787, the founding members of the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade convened. Over the following years, they wrote letters, orated, lobbied tirelessly, and gathered evidence on 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 finally passed in 1807.

A Lasting Legacy

The debate over who or what should be credited for abolition is a matter of debate. The Zorg's legacy, 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 widespread 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.

Kara's Narrative Method

In contrast to his previous books—such as the Pulitzer finalist Cobalt Red—Kara has had to fill in certain lacunae in the historical record. Consequently, imaginative flourishes sit awkwardly next to rigorously researched accounts, giving the book a slightly chimeric feel. Part thriller and part serious nonfiction, The Zorg ultimately manages to shedding light on one of history's most horrific episodes, using powerful storytelling and documented fact to assemble a portrait that stays with the reader long after the final page.