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Over the course of nearly four hundred years, the transatlantic slave trade resulted in 12.5 million Africans forcibly taken from their homelands to the Americas. A staggering 1.8 million of those souls perished during the Middle Passage, enduring scarcely imaginable conditions of extreme confinement, squalor, and disease. Some took their own lives by leaping overboard, while still more were forcibly cast into the sea.

Two Interwoven Narratives

In The Zorg, author Siddharth Kara weaves together two interconnected narratives. The first chronicles a harrowing incident aboard the eponymous slave ship—the systematic drowning of 132 captive individuals by its British crew. The second story explores how this atrocity came to influence the ending of the Atlantic slave trade in 1807, driven in large part by the dedicated work of a dazzling array of committed campaigners. Among them was Olaudah Equiano, who authored one of the rare first-person accounts of the Middle Passage, calling it “a scene of horror almost inconceivable”.

The Roots in Liverpool

The account begins in Liverpool, a port city that at the peak of its economic power was responsible for 40% of Europe's slave trade. Financing slavery was a lucrative venture for everyone from the elites but also the common people. One such investor, William Gregson, accumulated his earnings from rope-making, ploughed them into the slave trade, and eventually became 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 acquisition of human beings.

The Capture of the Zorg

Concurrently, a Dutch slave vessel named the Zorg (later referred to 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 capture Dutch ships at sea—a virtual sanctioning of privateering. The Zorg was soon captured 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 removed for graft.

The Nightmare Passage

When Hanley arrived at Cape Coast Castle—a fortress with a notorious holding cell beneath it—he assumed control of the captured Zorg. He then severely overcrowd it with enslaved people, 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 finally left Accra carrying 442 enslaved Africans, 17 crew members, and one notorious passenger: the former governor, Robert Stubbs.

Kara excels in 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" swept through the vessel, and then 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 illustrate of the sheer horror. The powerful testimony of Alexander Falconbridge, a doctor who became an activist, details how the captives' skin was frequently rubbed raw to the bone from lying on bare wood, their flesh pinched and torn between the planks.

The Unspeakable Decision

By late November 1781, the Zorg was still far from Jamaica and dangerously short on water. The crew resolved to jettison a number of the captives, who had already endured months of appalling conditions below deck. This unspeakable act was not motivated by ensuring survival—the Africans had begged to be spared, even without water rations—but by pure economic greed. Ship insurance policies did not cover losses from disease, but they would pay for cargo jettisoned out of “necessity” for the ship's safety. Over a period of 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.

The Courtroom Battle

Back in Liverpool, investor William Gregson was unhappy about 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 took them to court 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.” 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, citing the Zorg case as a key illustration 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 forensic 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, orated, lobbied tirelessly, and gathered evidence on 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 finally passed in 1807.

A Lasting Legacy

The question of who or what should be credited for abolition remains contentious. 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 widespread in human history, its abolition following a prolonged mass campaign was unprecedented, serving as an affirmation to the power of moral courage, the pen, and relentless persistence.

Kara's Narrative Method

Unlike his other work—such as the acclaimed Cobalt Red—Kara has had to fill in 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 historical analysis, The Zorg nevertheless succeeds in illuminating one of history's most horrific episodes, using powerful storytelling and documented fact to create a portrait that haunts the reader long after the final page.