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Over the spanning nearly four centuries, the Atlantic slave trafficking system saw 12.5 million Africans forcibly taken from their continent to the Americas. A devastating 1.8 million of those souls died during the voyage, subjected to scarcely imaginable conditions of extreme confinement, filth, and illness. Many took their own lives by leaping overboard, whereas others were forcibly cast into the sea.

A Tale of Two Stories

In The Zorg, author Siddharth Kara presents two interconnected narratives. The first details a harrowing incident aboard the eponymous slave ship—the deliberate murder of 132 captive individuals by its British crew. The second story explores 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 dazzling array of abolitionist activists. Among them was Olaudah Equiano, who wrote one of the few surviving 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 height of its economic power was accountable for 40% of Europe's slave trafficking. Financing slavery was a lucrative venture for not just the elites to the working classes. One such investor, William Gregson, accumulated his earnings from rope-making, invested them into the slave trade, and rose to become a prominent citizen and even mayor. Gregson financed 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.

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 left the Netherlands. With Britain declaring war on the Dutch in late 1780, the Royal Navy granted British ships permission to capture Dutch property at sea—a de facto sanctioning of privateering. The Zorg was subsequently taken 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 corruption.

The Nightmare Passage

When Hanley reached Cape Coast Castle—a stronghold with a notorious slave dungeon beneath it—he took command of the captured Zorg. He proceeded to grossly overload it with captives, placed a dozen of his own crew on board, and made 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 historical documents to bring to life the collective nightmare of being transported on a slave ship.

The Zorg's journey was fraught with disaster. Dysentery swept through 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 masterfully utilizes eyewitness accounts to illustrate of the sheer horror. The powerful testimony of Alexander Falconbridge, a ship's surgeon turned abolitionist, describes how the enslaved people's skin was often rubbed raw 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 still far from Jamaica and critically short on water. The crew made the decision to throw overboard a number of the enslaved Africans, who had already endured months of obscene conditions below deck. This monstrous act was not motivated by preserving life—the Africans had pleaded to be spared, even without water rations—but by pure economic greed. Maritime insurance policies did not cover deaths from disease, but they did cover 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 weak, the sick, along with 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 substantial sum in today's money. The insurers refused 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 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 brutality. Olaudah Equiano saw the letter and brought it to the activist Granville Sharp, who petitioned for a new trial. At the subsequent hearing, the events on the Zorg were examined in meticulous detail, exactly 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 convened. Over the subsequent years, they petitioned, orated, organized campaigns, 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 struggles, the Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade was finally passed in 1807.

A Lasting Legacy

The debate over who or what deserves credit for abolition remains contentious. The Zorg's influence, 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 mass campaign was historic, serving as an affirmation to the power of moral courage, the pen, and unwavering determination.

The Author's Approach

Unlike his other work—such as the Pulitzer finalist Cobalt Red—Kara has had to address certain gaps in the historical record. Consequently, speculative passages sit awkwardly next to scrupulously factual accounts, giving the book a slightly hybrid feel. A blend of narrative suspense and part historical analysis, The Zorg nevertheless succeeds in illuminating one of history's darkest chapters, using powerful storytelling and meticulous research to create a portrait that haunts the reader well after the final page.