Aboard the Zong: Remembering a Massacre
Volume 3 | Issue 7
Article by Andy Pearson. Edited by Liz Goodwin. Additional Research by Jack Barnes.
On the 6th September 1781, The Zong, a Liverpool-owned British slave ship, set sail under the guidance of Captain Luke Collingwood, both the first and last time he had ever took command of a ship. Captain Collingwood was accompanied at the start of his journey by 442 captured Africans and 17 crew members. He had packed the ship with large numbers of slaves in order to maximise profits for both himself and the owners of the ship. By maximising numbers, Collingwood had hoped to still make a large profit on completion of the voyage, given the fact that a significant proportion of slaves (usually around a third) would die in their journey across the Atlantic.
It was the 29th of November 1781 and The Zong was on its way to Jamaica from Africa from which it had departed over two months earlier. By this stage however, 60 slaves had already died along with seven crew members and sickness was spreading. Conditions under deck were filthy and ridden with disease, the excessively cramped conditions and common malnourishment only exacerbated the conditions further. Disease was able to spread easily and often fatally both on and underneath the deck. Left with the possibility that most of the slaves and crew members may not reach Jamaica alive, thus resulting in, at best, a small profit for Captain Collingwood, he decided to take evasion action. Sick slaves were unshackled and simply tossed overboard; as many as 133 victims, as well as 10 committing defiant acts of suicide, are believed to have suffered this fate.. As the Zong had insurance for any slaves lost at sea, but not on land, Captain Collingwood had hoped to gain £30 per head for each of the slaves he threw into the sea. It was a callous, brutal decision purely motivated by financial gain despite Collingwood’s claims that the decision a lack of water on board the ship motivated the decision. First Mate Kelsall, however, speaking as a witness in court, said there was not a water shortage and that Jamaica was not far away. Indeed, the ship arrived in Jamaica three weeks later on December 22nd and, sure enough, it was later revealed that the ship had around 420 gallons of water on board. Due to poor navigation, the trip ended up taking 108 days, had it taken 60 days, which was around average, the slaves would have arrived comfortably before the day of the massacre.
The Zong massacre was a horrific event driven by commercial profit but when the issue was taken to court, Captain Collingwood and his crew were not defending accusation of murder; instead, they were with the ship-owners for a ruling on the insurance pay out. Although insurance payouts had been common practise, this was the first known instance of a Captain deliberately killing huge numbers of slaves to profit from insurance. The original court case found in favour of the ship owners and the crew, forcing the insurance company to pay out. As a result, the insurers launched an appeal and were successful. In the appeal, Lord Chief Justice Mansfield stated that his reason for the decision was that the poor management of the ship and abundant water supplies put the fault with the crew.
In spite of this, many abolitionists were outraged at this massacre and demanded that the Zong’s crew faced criminal charges for their brutality. Granville Sharp who had been told of the massacre, sought justice and increased awareness of the slaves treatment but his attempts were halted by the law that had defined slaves as property. As Lord Chief Justice Mansfield bluntly put it, “the case of the slaves was the same as if horses or cattle had been thrown overboard.” Similarly, Solicitor General John Lee was somewhat bemused by calls for a criminal prosecution, saying that throwing slaves overboard was like throwing wood. Everybody involved in the Zong massacre, or Zong affair as it was commonly known at the time, avoided any sort of criminal charge or prosecution but Sharp still managed to spread an anti-slavery message, publically speaking about the massacre and asking bishops from all over the country for their support.
Even though the Zong massacre did not provoke an immediate change in law, work of campaigners like Sharp along with authors such as Thomas Clarkson and James Ramsay, who wrote essays on the slave trade in 1785 and 1784 respectively, stimulated growing public support for the abolition of the slave trade. Olaudah Equiano was perhaps one of the most successful at exposing the horror of the Zong by including it in his autobiography entitled ‘The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano.’ The growth in awareness made the massacre somewhat of a national talking point, people who were disgusted by what they heard and read began taking a strong stance on the issue where they may have otherwise been disinterested. The Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade was subsequently created in 1787 in order to represent the growing public support and to raise further awareness via the printing of pamphlets etc. The society included influential members such as Granville Sharp and Thomas Clarkson. Twenty years later parliament responded to the growing anti-slave trade attitudes by passing the Slave Trade Act 1807, banning all slave trade in the British Empire. However, some ships continued with the illegal trade and often threw slaves overboard as if they were caught by the Royal Navy with slaves on-board then their vessels would be impounded. Nonetheless, the Zong massacre ended up saving the lives and freedom of many Africans, despite the instances of illegal trading, by acting as a catalyst for growing public support for the abolition of slavery that in turn sped up the passing of the Slave Trade Act 1807.
Facts
1) Britain banned the slave trade in 1807, imposing large fines for any slave found on a British ship.
2) The total number of Africans to have been made slaves in the Atlantic slave trade is thought to be near 10,000,000.
3) Captain Luke Collingwood has been a ship’s surgeon before becoming a captain.
4) The Atlantic slave trade came into fruition in the 16th century, in order to fulfil the demands for cheap and plentiful labour needed on the plantations in the ‘New World’.