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Over the spanning nearly four hundred years, the transatlantic slave trade saw 12.5 million Africans trafficked from their continent to the Americas. A devastating 1.8 million of those individuals perished during the Middle Passage, subjected to scarcely imaginable conditions of extreme confinement, filth, and illness. Some took their own lives by leaping overboard, whereas still more were callously thrown into the sea.

A Tale of Two Stories

In The Zorg, author Siddharth Kara presents two interconnected narratives. The first chronicles a harrowing incident aboard the namesake slave ship—the deliberate murder 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 dedicated work of a coalition of abolitionist activists. 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”.

The Roots in Liverpool

The tale begins in Liverpool, a port city that at the height of its prosperity was accountable for 40% of Europe's slave trafficking. Investing in slavery was a highly profitable venture for everyone from the elites but also the common people. One such entrepreneur, William Gregson, saved up his wages from rope-making, invested them into the slave trade, and rose to become a wealthy burgher and later 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 trade goods like tobacco, firearms, knives, and various “India goods” such as chintz and cowrie shells—the latter being a common currency in the purchase of enslaved people.

The Capture of the Zorg

Around the same time, a Dutch slave vessel named the Zorg (later referred to by the British as the Zong) had departed the Netherlands. With Britain at war with the Dutch in late 1780, the Royal Navy gave British ships authority to seize Dutch property at sea—a de facto license for privateering. The Zorg was soon taken by a British captain and held off the Gold Coast. Meanwhile, Captain Hanley, on a slaving expedition, took aboard a disgraced British governor named Robert Stubbs, who had been expelled for graft.

The Nightmare Passage

When Hanley reached Cape Coast Castle—a fortress with a notorious slave dungeon beneath it—he assumed control of the captured Zorg. He proceeded to severely overcrowd 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 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 collective nightmare of being transported on a slave ship.

The Zorg's journey was plagued with disaster. "The flux" ravaged the vessel, and then 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 effectively employs period testimonies to paint a picture of the unmitigated terror. The powerful testimony of Alexander Falconbridge, a doctor who became an activist, describes 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 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 suffered through months of obscene conditions below deck. This unspeakable act was not motivated by preserving life—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 several days, the crew drowned “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 dissatisfied with the profit on his venture. He submitted an insurance claim for £30 per drowned captive—a substantial sum in today's money. The insurers declined 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 anonymous letter appeared in a widely read 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 abolitionist Granville Sharp, who filed a motion for a new trial. At the following hearing, the events on the Zorg were reviewed in forensic detail, exactly 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 first met. Over the subsequent years, they wrote letters, made speeches, 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 struggles, 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 is contentious. 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 widespread 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 persistence.

Kara's Narrative Method

Unlike his other work—such as the acclaimed Cobalt Red—Kara has had to address certain lacunae in the historical record. Consequently, imaginative flourishes sit awkwardly next to rigorously researched accounts, giving the book a somewhat hybrid feel. Part thriller and part serious nonfiction, The Zorg nevertheless manages to shedding light on one of history's most horrific episodes, using compelling prose and documented fact to assemble a portrait that haunts the reader long after the final page.