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The Zong Massacre was a famous mass-killing of African slaves that took place on the Zong a British ship owned by James Gregson. The resulting court case was a landmark in the battle against the African Slave Trade of the eighteenth century.
Background The Zong was a Dutch ship which had been captured by the British. Its original name, Zorg (Dutch for 'care') was misread as Zong. The Zong left Africa on September 6, 1781 en route to England on the Middle Passage captained by Sir Luke Collingwood. Its first destination was to be Jamaica. On November 27, 1781 it arrived at an island which the crew believed to be Jamaica. The ship had taken on more slaves than it could safely transport. By November 29, 1781, this overcrowding, together with malnutrition and disease had killed seven of the crew and approximately sixty African slaves. That day the Captain (Collingwood) decided to throw the remaining sick overboard. Since the ship's insurance would not pay for sick slaves or slaves that died of illness, the captain ordered 133 slaves to be drowned. Later, it was claimed that the slaves had been jettisoned because the ship did not have enough water to keep them alive for the rest of the voyage. This claim was later disproved; the ship had 420 gallons of water left on arrival. The British courts ruled that the ship owners could not claim insurance on the slaves. No officers or crew, however, were charged or prosecuted for the calculated killing of 133 people. Abolitionist Movement The captain's scheme was exposed by an ex-slave named Olaudah Equiano. The revelation of this massacre set off the abolition movement and created a public uproar against slavery. Two famous activists that emerged from the Zong massacre were Thomas Clarkson who wrote the "Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species," and James Ramsay who wrote "Essay on the Treatment and Conversion of African Slaves in the Sugar Colonies." Captain Collingwood also succumbed to illness before the voyage ended. Further reading Baucom, Ian. Specters of the Atlantic: Finance Capital, Slavery, and the Philosophy of History. Durham Duke University Press, 2005. ISBN 0822335581, 0822335964. | ||||||||
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