The Zorg by Siddharth Kara: An Examination of Scarcely Imaginable Atrocities at Sea

Over the spanning nearly four centuries, the transatlantic slave trade 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 unfathomable conditions of extreme confinement, filth, and illness. Many took their own lives by leaping overboard, while still more were forcibly cast into the sea.

Two Interwoven Narratives

In The Zorg, author Siddharth Kara presents two parallel narratives. The first details a harrowing incident aboard the namesake slave ship—the systematic drowning of 132 captive individuals by its British crew. The second story examines how this atrocity came to influence the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade in 1807, thanks largely by the relentless efforts of a dazzling array of committed campaigners. Among them was Olaudah Equiano, who authored one of the few surviving first-person narratives 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 economic power was accountable for 40% of Europe's slave trade. Financing slavery was a highly profitable venture for not just the elites to the working classes. One such entrepreneur, 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 set sail from Liverpool for West Africa in October 1780 under Captain Richard Hanley. Its hold was loaded with commodities like tobacco, firearms, knives, and so-called “India goods” such as chintz and cowrie shells—the latter being a standard rate in the acquisition of enslaved people.

A Ship Seized

Around the same time, a Dutch slave vessel named the Zorg (later anglicized 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 authority to seize Dutch ships at sea—a virtual sanctioning of piracy. 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 expelled for graft.

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 proceeded to grossly overload it with captives, placed a dozen of his own crew on board, and appointed Luke Collingwood, a ship's surgeon of dubious nautical skill, its captain. In August 1781, the Zorg finally left Accra carrying 442 captives, 17 crew members, and one depraved passenger: the former governor, Robert Stubbs.

Kara excels in using contemporaneous sources to vividly reconstruct the general hell of being transported on a slave ship.

The Zorg's journey was fraught with calamity. "The flux" swept through the vessel, followed by scurvy. The captain fell ill, lost his senses, and handed command over to Stubbs. Thus, “a ship full of decay and death was being commanded by a passenger.” Kara masterfully utilizes eyewitness accounts to paint a picture of the unmitigated terror. The graphic testimony of Alexander Falconbridge, a doctor who became an activist, details how the captives' skin was frequently worn down to the bone from lying on bare wood, their flesh caught between the planks.

A Calculated Atrocity

By late November 1781, the Zorg was still far from Jamaica and dangerously short on water. The crew resolved to throw overboard a number of the captives, who had already suffered through months of obscene conditions below deck. This unspeakable act was not motivated by ensuring survival—the Africans had pleaded to be spared, even without water rations—but by pure economic greed. Maritime 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 murdered “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 dissatisfied with the profit on his venture. He filed an insurance claim for £30 per lost slave—a considerable 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.” 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, made a powerful case against slavery, citing the Zorg case as a prime example of its brutality. Olaudah Equiano read the letter and took it to the abolitionist Granville Sharp, who filed a motion for a new trial. At the subsequent hearing, the events on the Zorg were examined in forensic detail, precisely what the abolitionists had hoped for.

The Road to 1807

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 petitioned, made speeches, organized campaigns, and gathered evidence on 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 finally passed in 1807.

An Enduring Impact

The debate over who or what deserves credit for abolition is contentious. The Zorg's influence, however, is powerfully 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 sustained public movement was historic, serving as an testament to the power of moral courage, the pen, and relentless determination.

The Author's Approach

In contrast to his other work—such as the Pulitzer finalist Cobalt Red—Kara has had to fill in certain lacunae in the historical record. Consequently, speculative passages sit awkwardly next to scrupulously factual accounts, giving the book a somewhat chimeric feel. Part thriller 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 haunts the reader well after the final page.