Siddharth Kara's The Zorg: A Review of Almost Unthinkable Horrors at Sea

Over the course of nearly four hundred years, the transatlantic slave trade saw 12.5 million Africans forcibly taken from their homelands to the Americas. A devastating 1.8 million of those individuals died during the voyage, subjected to scarcely imaginable conditions of overcrowding, squalor, and illness. Many took their own lives by throwing themselves overboard, while still more were forcibly cast into the sea.

Two Interwoven Narratives

In The Zorg, author Siddharth Kara presents two interconnected narratives. The first details a horrific incident aboard the eponymous slave ship—the systematic drowning of 132 enslaved Africans by its British crew. The second story explores how this event played a pivotal role in the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade in 1807, thanks largely by the dedicated work of a coalition of committed campaigners. Among them was Olaudah Equiano, who authored one of the rare first-person accounts of the Middle Passage, describing it as “a scene of horror almost inconceivable”.

The Roots in Liverpool

The account begins in Liverpool, a port city that at the height of its economic power was accountable for 40% of Europe's slave trade. Investing in slavery was a highly profitable venture for not just the elites to the working classes. One such entrepreneur, William Gregson, accumulated his earnings from his trade, ploughed them into the slave trade, and eventually became a prominent citizen 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 cargo was loaded with trade goods like tobacco, firearms, knives, and so-called “India goods” such as chintz and cowrie shells—the shells being a common currency in the acquisition of human beings.

The Capture of the Zorg

Concurrently, 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 gave British ships permission to seize Dutch property at sea—a virtual license for piracy. The Zorg was subsequently taken by a British captain and held off the Gold Coast. Meanwhile, Captain Hanley, on a slaving expedition, picked up a disgraced British governor named Robert Stubbs, who had been expelled for graft.

The Nightmare Passage

When Hanley reached Cape Coast Castle—a stronghold with a notorious slave dungeon beneath it—he assumed control of the captured Zorg. He then grossly overload it with captives, placed 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 enslaved Africans, 17 crew members, and one depraved passenger: the former governor, Robert Stubbs.

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

The Zorg's journey was plagued with calamity. "The flux" swept through the vessel, followed by scurvy. The captain fell ill, became delirious, and handed command over to Stubbs. Thus, “a ship full of decay and death was being commanded by a passenger.” Kara effectively employs period testimonies to illustrate of the unmitigated terror. The powerful testimony of Alexander Falconbridge, a ship's surgeon turned abolitionist, 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 miles 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 appalling conditions below deck. This monstrous act was not motivated by preserving life—the Africans had begged to be spared, even without water rations—but by cold economic greed. Maritime insurance policies did not cover deaths from disease, but they would pay for cargo jettisoned 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.

Insurance and Injustice

Back in Liverpool, investor William Gregson was dissatisfied with 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 took them to court and was awarded a trial by jury, with his lawyers arguing 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 published essay appeared in a prominent English newspaper. The author, who claimed to have attended the court proceedings, argued compellingly against slavery, citing the Zorg case as a prime example 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 subsequent hearing, the events on the Zorg were reviewed in meticulous detail, exactly what the abolitionists had wanted.

The Road to 1807

In the spring of 1787, the initial group of the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade convened. Over the following years, they petitioned, orated, organized campaigns, and meticulously documented 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 enacted in 1807.

An Enduring Impact

The question of who or what deserves credit for abolition remains contentious. The Zorg's legacy, however, is powerfully captured by J.M.W. Turner's famous painting, The Slave Ship, which was inspired by the events of 1781. While slavery has been widespread in human history, its abolition following a sustained mass campaign was unprecedented, serving as an affirmation to the power of persistent activism, the pen, and unwavering persistence.

The Author's Approach

In contrast to his previous books—such as the Pulitzer finalist Cobalt Red—Kara has had to fill in certain gaps in the historical record. Consequently, imaginative flourishes contrast with scrupulously factual accounts, giving the book a somewhat chimeric feel. A blend of narrative suspense and part serious nonfiction, The Zorg ultimately succeeds in illuminating one of history's darkest chapters, using compelling prose and documented fact to assemble a portrait that stays with the reader well after the final page.