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Over the spanning nearly four hundred years, the transatlantic slave trade resulted in 12.5 million Africans forcibly taken from their continent to the Americas. A staggering 1.8 million of those individuals died during the voyage, enduring unfathomable conditions of overcrowding, squalor, and disease. Some took their own lives by throwing themselves overboard, whereas others were forcibly cast into the sea.

A Tale of Two Stories

In The Zorg, author Siddharth Kara weaves together two interconnected narratives. The first chronicles a harrowing incident aboard the namesake slave ship—the systematic drowning of 132 enslaved Africans by its British crew. The second story explores how this atrocity played a pivotal role in the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade in 1807, thanks largely by the relentless efforts of a dazzling array of abolitionist activists. Among them was Olaudah Equiano, who authored one of the few surviving first-person accounts of the Middle Passage, describing it as “a scene of horror almost inconceivable”.

The Roots in Liverpool

The tale originates in Liverpool, a port city that at the peak of its prosperity was accountable for 40% of Europe's slave trade. Investing in slavery was a highly profitable venture for not just the wealthy but also the common people. One such entrepreneur, William Gregson, saved up his wages from rope-making, 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 departed from Liverpool for West Africa in October 1780 under Captain Richard Hanley. Its hold was loaded with commodities like tobacco, firearms, knives, and various “India goods” such as chintz and cowrie shells—the shells being a standard rate in the purchase of enslaved people.

A Ship Seized

Concurrently, a Dutch slave vessel named the Zorg (later anglicized 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 permission to seize Dutch property at sea—a de facto license for piracy. The Zorg was soon taken by a British captain and anchored off the Gold Coast. Meanwhile, Captain Hanley, during one of his voyages, took aboard a fleeing British governor named Robert Stubbs, who had been expelled for graft.

A Voyage into Hell

When Hanley arrived at Cape Coast Castle—a fortress with a notorious slave dungeon beneath it—he took command of the captured Zorg. He proceeded to grossly overload it with enslaved people, placed a dozen of his own crew on board, and made 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 notorious passenger: the former governor, Robert Stubbs.

Kara excels in using historical documents to vividly reconstruct the general hell of being trafficked on a slave ship.

The Zorg's journey was plagued with calamity. "The flux" swept through the vessel, and then scurvy. The captain fell ill, lost his senses, and appointed Stubbs. Thus, “a ship full of decay and death was being commanded by a passenger.” Kara effectively employs eyewitness accounts to illustrate of the sheer horror. The graphic testimony of Alexander Falconbridge, a doctor who became an activist, details how the captives' skin was often rubbed raw to the bone from being packed 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 dangerously short on water. The crew resolved to throw overboard a number of the captives, who had already endured months of appalling conditions below deck. This monstrous act was not motivated by ensuring survival—the Africans had pleaded to be allowed to live, even without water rations—but by cold economic greed. Maritime insurance policies did not cover deaths from natural causes, but they would pay for 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, along with women and children, even a baby born during the voyage.

The Courtroom Battle

Back in Liverpool, investor William Gregson was dissatisfied with the profit on his investment. He filed an insurance claim for £30 per drowned captive—a considerable 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 been present the court proceedings, argued compellingly against slavery, using the Zorg case as a prime example of its inherent evil. Olaudah Equiano read the letter and took 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.

A Sustained Campaign

In the spring of 1787, the initial group of the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade first met. Over the following years, they petitioned, made speeches, organized campaigns, 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 setbacks, the Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade was finally passed in 1807.

An Enduring Impact

The question of who or what should be credited for abolition remains a matter of debate. The Zorg's legacy, however, is powerfully evident in 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 mass campaign was historic, serving as an testament to the power of moral courage, the pen, and unwavering persistence.

The Author's Approach

Unlike his previous books—such as the Pulitzer finalist Cobalt Red—Kara has had to fill in certain lacunae in the available documentation. Consequently, speculative passages sit awkwardly next to rigorously researched accounts, giving the book a slightly chimeric feel. A blend of narrative suspense and part serious nonfiction, The Zorg ultimately succeeds in illuminating one of history's most horrific episodes, using compelling prose and meticulous research to assemble a account that haunts the reader long after the final page.