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Over the spanning nearly four hundred years, the transatlantic slave trade resulted in 12.5 million Africans trafficked from their homelands to the Americas. A staggering 1.8 million of those souls perished during the voyage, enduring scarcely imaginable conditions of extreme confinement, squalor, and illness. Many chose to end their suffering by throwing themselves overboard, whereas still more were forcibly cast into the sea.

Two Interwoven Narratives

In The Zorg, author Siddharth Kara weaves together two parallel narratives. The first chronicles 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 event played a pivotal role in the ending of the Atlantic slave trade in 1807, thanks largely by the relentless efforts of a coalition of abolitionist activists. Among them was Olaudah Equiano, who authored one of the rare first-person narratives of the Middle Passage, calling it “a scene of horror almost inconceivable”.

Liverpool's Central Role

The tale begins in Liverpool, a port city that at the peak of its prosperity was responsible for 40% of Europe's slave trade. Financing slavery was a lucrative venture for not just the wealthy to the common people. One such entrepreneur, William Gregson, accumulated his wages from his trade, ploughed 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 filled with commodities like tobacco, firearms, knives, and so-called “India goods” such as chintz and cowrie shells—the shells being a standard rate in the purchase 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 left 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 virtual license for privateering. The Zorg was subsequently captured 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.

A Voyage into Hell

When Hanley reached Cape Coast Castle—a fortress with a notorious holding cell beneath it—he took command 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 dubious nautical skill, 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 is particularly skilled at using contemporaneous sources to vividly reconstruct the collective nightmare of being transported on a slave ship.

The Zorg's journey was plagued with disaster. "The flux" ravaged the vessel, followed by scurvy. The captain succumbed to sickness, became delirious, and handed command over to Stubbs. Thus, “a ship full of decay and death was being commanded by a passenger.” Kara masterfully utilizes period testimonies to paint a picture of the sheer horror. The graphic testimony of Alexander Falconbridge, a doctor who became an activist, details how the captives' skin was often worn down to the bone from being packed on bare wood, their flesh caught between the planks.

The Unspeakable Decision

By late November 1781, the Zorg was still miles from Jamaica and critically short on water. The crew resolved to jettison a number of the enslaved Africans, who had already endured months of obscene conditions below deck. This unspeakable act was not motivated by preserving life—the Africans had begged to be spared, even without water rations—but by pure 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, even a baby born during the voyage.

Insurance and Injustice

Back in Liverpool, investor William Gregson was unhappy about the profit on his investment. He submitted an insurance claim for £30 per drowned captive—a considerable sum in today's money. The insurers refused to pay. In March 1783, Gregson sued and won 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.” Just twelve days after the trial, an anonymous letter 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 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 wanted.

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 subsequent years, they wrote letters, orated, lobbied tirelessly, 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 setbacks, the Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade was finally passed in 1807.

A Lasting Legacy

The question of who or what deserves credit for abolition is a matter of debate. The Zorg's legacy, 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 near-universal in human history, its abolition following a sustained public movement was unprecedented, serving as an affirmation to the power of moral courage, the pen, and relentless persistence.

Kara's Narrative Method

In contrast to his other work—such as the acclaimed Cobalt Red—Kara has had to fill in certain gaps in the historical record. At times, speculative passages contrast with rigorously researched accounts, giving the book a slightly hybrid feel. Part thriller and part historical analysis, The Zorg nevertheless succeeds in illuminating one of history's darkest chapters, using powerful storytelling and meticulous research to assemble a portrait that stays with the reader long after the final page.