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Over the spanning nearly four centuries, the transatlantic slave trade saw 12.5 million Africans forcibly taken from their homelands to the Americas. A staggering 1.8 million of those individuals perished during the Middle Passage, subjected to unfathomable conditions of overcrowding, filth, and illness. Some chose to end their suffering by leaping overboard, while others 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 namesake 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 dazzling array of abolitionist activists. Among them was Olaudah Equiano, who wrote 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 tale begins in Liverpool, a port city that at the peak of its economic power was accountable for 40% of Europe's slave trafficking. Financing slavery was a lucrative venture for not just the elites to the common people. One such entrepreneur, William Gregson, accumulated his wages from rope-making, ploughed them into the slave trade, and rose to become a prominent citizen and even 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 cargo was loaded with commodities like tobacco, firearms, knives, and various “India goods” such as chintz and cowrie shells—the latter being a common currency in the acquisition of enslaved people.

A Ship Seized

Concurrently, a Dutch slave vessel named the Zorg (later referred to 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 authority to capture Dutch property at sea—a de facto sanctioning of piracy. The Zorg was soon captured by a British captain and anchored off the Gold Coast. Meanwhile, Captain Hanley, during one of his voyages, picked up a fleeing British governor named Robert Stubbs, who had been removed for corruption.

A Voyage into Hell

When Hanley arrived at Cape Coast Castle—a fortress with a vast slave dungeon beneath it—he assumed control of the captured Zorg. He then severely overcrowd it with captives, 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 is particularly skilled at using contemporaneous sources to vividly reconstruct the general hell of being trafficked on a slave ship.

The Zorg's journey was fraught with calamity. "The flux" ravaged the vessel, and then scurvy. The captain succumbed to sickness, became delirious, and appointed 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 sheer horror. 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 caught 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 jettison a number of the captives, who had already suffered through months of appalling conditions below deck. This unspeakable act was not motivated by ensuring survival—the Africans had pleaded to be allowed to live, 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 a period of days, the crew murdered “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 unhappy about the financial return 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 took them to court and won 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, made a powerful case against slavery, citing 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 following hearing, the events on the Zorg were examined in meticulous detail, precisely 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 first met. Over the subsequent years, they wrote letters, orated, organized campaigns, and gathered evidence on 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.

A Lasting Legacy

The question of who or what should be credited for abolition remains a matter of debate. The Zorg's legacy, however, is visibly evident in 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 sustained mass campaign was unprecedented, serving as an testament to the power of persistent activism, the pen, and relentless persistence.

Kara's Narrative Method

In contrast to his previous books—such as the acclaimed Cobalt Red—Kara has had to fill in certain gaps in the historical record. At times, 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 powerful storytelling and meticulous research to create a portrait that stays with the reader long after the final page.