THE ZORG

Mass murder aboard a slave transport, half-forgotten today but an iconic event.

Historian Kara, author of Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives, reminds readers that slave commerce began in Africa, where tribes made war on neighboring tribes and sold captives to European and American entrepreneurs at fortified depots rented from African rulers along the west coast. He opens in Britain, 1780, when trade was hobbled by American rebels and their European allies whose privateers were seizing British ships. The Zorg, the book’s subject, was a Dutch merchant vessel captured by the British. (“Zorg” means “care” in Dutch—“an unintended irony,” Kara writes.) Purchased by a slave entrepreneur, it was crewed by 17 men of varying competence, carelessly stocked with food and water, and vastly overcrowded with 442 captives. This might not have mattered, but bad weather and navigation errors prolonged the crossing, and when the water supply seemed critically low, the crew threw 130 Africans overboard. Readers may cringe, but no problem arose until the owners asked their insurer to reimburse them for the drowned Africans, and the company refused. The owners sued, and a British jury decided that the insurer must pay. That might have ended matters, but an article appeared in a London newspaper describing these events. No abolition movement as such then existed, yet a scattering of individuals were working to that end, including Kara’s hero, Granville Sharp, a civil servant and polymath who sprang into action and, in cooperation with the insurers, succeeded in obtaining a new trial. Kara hails their victory but deplores the judge’s opinion. The Africans had been drowned because of crew incompetence, he ruled. That was unacceptable. Had the ship been stocked and navigated properly it would have been OK. Despite this, the publicity converted many Britons to abolition; the British slave trade was finally outlawed in 1807 and the empire’s slavery in 1838.

A vivid historical footnote, but also a milestone.