Zong massacre

Zong massacre, massacre of more than 130 enslaved Africans by the crew of the British slave ship Zong on and in the days following November 29, 1781. A combination of faulty casks and poor navigation had reportedly left the vessel with less fresh water than those aboard would need to complete the journey from the Gold Coast (now in Ghana) to Jamaica (then a British colony). To reduce the strain on the remaining water supply, the sailors pushed many of the enslaved people into the ocean. That event and the legal case that followed became a rallying cry for abolitionists protesting the inhumanity of the transatlantic slave trade and eventually contributed to the passage of British antislavery laws.

Background

The Zong was originally a Dutch slave ship called the Zorgue. In 1781 the British started targeting ships belonging to European powers that supported the American rebel colonies. The Zorgue, which included a “cargo” of 244 enslaved African men, women, and children in its hold, was one of three Dutch ships captured by the British off the African coast. It was sold to a consortium of merchants operating out of Liverpool, England, who renamed it the Zong. The newly acquired ship and its “goods” were promptly insured. Luke Collingwood, a ship’s surgeon, was named captain; it was his first command. The Zong traded for an additional 198 enslaved African men, women, and children along the African coast before departing the port of Accra in the Gold Coast on August 18. By then the 244 enslaved Africans originally on the Zong are believed to have been living in inhumane conditions on the ship for more than a year. In addition to the enslaved Africans and the crew, the Zong included one passenger, a former slave ship captain named Robert Stubbs.

Before making for Black River, Jamaica, the Zong stopped for provisions at the island of São Tomé (now part of Sao Tome and Principe) on August 24–25. This might be where trouble began. The ship’s first mate, James Kelsall, did not supervise the loading of food and water onto the ship, as was his usual duty. Moreover, the ship’s cooper (builder and repairer of casks) was sick and unable to work, which left the quality of the Zong’s new water casks in doubt.

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Voyage and murders

By late November the Zong had reached the Caribbean, and 62 of the 442 enslaved Africans on board, as well as four crew members, including the second mate, had died. Collingwood had taken ill and handed over command to Stubbs. Kelsall, to whom the command should have passed by virtue of his position as first mate, had been suspended after arguing with Collingwood. On November 21 it was discovered that a large quantity of fresh water had leaked from the water casks, but water rations were still sufficient for the remaining distance to Jamaica. However, on November 27–28 a crewman made a major navigational error, mistaking Jamaica for Saint-Domingue, a hostile French territory (now Haiti). Consequently, the Zong sped past Jamaica, and the error was realized only on November 29. Kelsall was reinstated as first mate, and calculations reportedly revealed that the ship had only four days’ fresh water left but would take another 10–14 days to reach Jamaica. However, these calculations are highly suspect; by 1783, when they were reported to British courts, the numbers’ originators had had good reason to minimize the amount of water left and to inflate the number of days remaining in the voyage.

Kelsall and the surviving crew members convened on November 29 and unanimously agreed to throw enslaved Africans overboard. The murders began at approximately 8:00 pm, when all hands were available to help commit them. The sailors chose 54 women and children (since they were deemed less valuable than the men) and pushed them one by one through the main cabin’s windows into the sea. On December 1 the crew pushed overboard an additional group, consisting of 42 men. Sometime afterward they pushed overboard a third set, numbering 38 enslaved Africans. Having witnessed this, 10 other enslaved people jumped overboard, although 1 person managed to climb back on board.

The massacre’s final death toll thus came to 143 people. However, when the Zong arrived at Black River, Jamaica, on December 22, the ship was carrying only 208 enslaved Africans. Stubbs attributed the discrepancy to the deaths by “famine” of an additional 30 or so enslaved Africans in the voyage’s remaining days, but there was no way to confirm that statement. The ship’s log, ostensibly a record of both the journey and the “cargo,” had gone missing in Jamaica.

Legal proceedings

After learning of the decimation of its “cargo,” the syndicate that owned the Zong filed a claim with its insurance company for the loss of 132 enslaved Africans, but the company denied the claim, since the Zong’s crew members were themselves responsible for the loss. On March 6, 1783, the owners took the company to court at Guildhall, London, and, in the ensuing jury trial, they successfully argued that, under the terms of the insurance policy, they were entitled to compensation. The insurance company was ordered to pay £30 per enslaved person claimed as lost. The legal proceedings had focused not on murder but on whether pushing “cargo” overboard had been justified by the circumstances.

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The insurance company appealed the jury’s decision, and a hearing was set for May 21, 1783, at the Court of King’s Bench in Westminster Hall. During that hearing, a new fact emerged: prior to the murder of the third and final group of enslaved people, it had rained. Presumably, rain would have allowed the Zong to replenish its freshwater stores, negating any supposed need to push additional enslaved people overboard. In light of this revelation, Lord Mansfield, the presiding judge, ordered a second trial.

However, that trial never came to pass. By now it is likely that the owners of the Zong had grown wary of the attention they had been receiving. In taking the matter to court, they had revealed what had occurred aboard the Zong to the public, which first learned the facts from an anonymous letter to The Morning Chronicle and London Advertiser on March 18, 1783. The news that a mass murder had taken place aboard a British ship, and that the ship’s owners intended to profit from it, infuriated many of the paper’s readers.

Legacy

The sailors who had worked aboard the Zong all returned to their lives after the trial; Collingwood had succumbed to his illness shortly after the ship’s arrival in Jamaica. The 208 surviving enslaved people were presumably sold.

The Zong became a symbol of the horrors of the transatlantic slave trade and a common talking point for the abolitionist movement, led in this instance by Olaudah Equiano (a formerly enslaved African-born writer and sailor) and Granville Sharp (an English scholar and philanthropist). The movement succeeded in having Parliament abolish the slave trade in the British Empire in 1807 and abolish slavery itself in most of the British colonies in 1833.

The 1840 painting Slave Ship by English artist J.M.W. Turner may have been inspired in part by the Zong massacre. The 1997 novel Feeding the Ghosts by Fred D’Aguiar, a British writer of Guyanese descent, is a fictionalized account of an enslaved person on the Zong who survives being pushed overboard. The 2007 play An African Cargo by Ghanaian-born writer Margaret Busby depicts the massacre and the court case.

In 2007, the bicentenary of the U.K.’s abolition of the slave trade, a stone memorial was placed at the docking site of the Zong in Black River, Jamaica. That same year the British government’s Department for Culture, Media and Sport launched the Understanding Slavery Initiative, which held several commemorations, including the sailing of a Zong replica on the River Thames in London.