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November 29, 2010 · 9:54 pm

This Day in History 11/29: The 1781 Zong Massacre

Print of the crew of the Zong throwing sick Africans overboard (1781)

Movements can often be sparked by the most inane and ordinary of circumstances.

In the case of abolition, one could argue that it all began with an insurance fraud case.

On November 29, 1781, the Zong, a slave ship carrying Africans to Jamaica, had a problem. Two months before, in their zeal for profits, the crew of the Zong stuffed the hold of the ship with more Africans than it could carry. By November, malnutrition and disease had taken the lives of seven crew members and almost 60 enslaved Africans.

Luke Collingwood, captain of the Zong, now made what he considered the best decision to stem the losses for his bosses in Liverpool. If he continued sailing, and delivered a pile of corpses to the Kingston docks, the owners had no redress. If, however, the sick Africans were lost at sea, then the shipowners’ insurance would cover the loss. Under the “jettison” clause, enslaved persons were considered cargo, and their loss would be covered at £30 per head.

So on November 29, Collingwood did the “logical” thing: he ordered 54 sick Africans dumped overboard. Another 42 perished the next day, and 26 the day after that. 10 Africans voluntarily flung themselves overboard, in an act of defiance against the captain’s decision. In all, 122 Africans were thrown overboard.

Yet when the ship owners filed their claim with the insurance company, things went downhill. The insurers disputed the claims of the captain and the owners–largely on the testimony of James Kelsall, First Mate on the Zong. According to the insurance claim, the Africans were thrown overboard “for the safety of the ship,” as there wasn’t enough water for the cargo and crew to survive the rest of the voyage. But Kelsall–who expressed doubts early on to Collingwood about the scheme–testified that there was plenty of water for the remaining leg of the journey. Indeed, when the Zong reached Jamaica on the 22nd of December, there was 422 gallons of drinking water in the hold.

The case went to court, and the court ruled in favor of Collingwood and the owners. During the appeals process, an ex-slave and author, Olaudah Equiano, brought the case–soon to be known as the “Zong Massacre”–to the attention of Granville Sharp, one of Britain’s leading early abolitionists. Sharp immediately became involved in the prosecution of the appeal, even though eminent jurists such as John Lee, Soliciter General for England and Wales, dismissed the affair stating “the case was the same as if horses had been thrown overboard.” This time, the court ruled that the ship owners were not eligible for insurance since the water in the hold proved that the cargo was mismanaged.

Sharp and his colleagues tried to press murder charges against Collingwood and the owners, but to no avail. The Solicitor General, John Lee, stated that:

“What is this claim that human people have been thrown overboard? This is a case of chattels or goods. Blacks are goods and property; it is madness to accuse these well-serving honourable men of murder. They acted out of necessity and in the most appropriate manner for the cause. The late Captain Collingwood acted in the interest of his ship to protect the safety of his crew. To question the judgement of an experienced well-travelled captain held in the highest regard is one of folly, especially when talking of slaves. The case is the same as if wood had been thrown overboard.”

Lee hoped the matter would rest with his decision. Instead it unleashed a firestorm.

Within a few years of the Zong Massacre, abolitionists Thomas Clarkson and James Ramsay issued pamphlets and essays condemning the conditions of the slave trade. Together with Sharp and Equiano, they would approach a young member of Parliament from Yorkshire, William Wilberforce, to take up the cause of abolition.

Beginning in 1784, Wilberforce would lead a 50-year struggle in Parliament to abolish slavery in the British Empire. The efforts of abolitionists such as these led to the 1807 law abolishing the slave trade. 26 years later, the British Parliament outlawed slavery throughout the British Empire. The British abolition movement inspired similar movements worldwide–including a burgeoning anti-slavery movement across the Atlantic that would lead to civil war and eventual emancipation.

And to think…it was all sparked by insurance fraud.

For more information about the Zong Massacre, here are some helpful sites:

Information about the slave ship Zong (1781)

Lesson Plan about the Zong case

Gloucestershire, UK County Council website about Granville Sharp and the Zong Massacre

British National Archives catalog of documents relating to the Zong affair

A Jamaican perspective on the Zong incident

Mr. D’s History Bookshelf # 3: Many Thousand Gone: African Americans from Slavery to Freedom

The more we peel the layers of a topic, the deeper we penetrate, and the more confused we become.

This is the conundrum of many themes, but none more so than the tragedy of human slavery. In the United States, slavery pulses like a raw nerve because its lingering effects exist today, right in our faces. This rawness, this immediacy makes slavery difficult to examine with a clear eye.

Years ago, historians and educators only touched on slavery as a cursory issue to other themes—the American Revolution or the Civil War, for example. If it was examined at all, it was with the soulful eye of a guilty conscience: 400 years of kidnapping, bondage, hard labor and cruel mistreatment.

None of this is in dispute, nor is the overall evil of slavery. Yet it has only been recently that classrooms have the ability to put a human face on the slavery issue.

The more we peel the layers of a topic, the deeper we penetrate, and the more confused we become.

None of this is in dispute, nor is the overall evil of slavery. Yet it has only been recently that classrooms have the ability to put a human face on the slavery issue. Many Thousand Gone: African Americans from Slavery to Freedom by Virginia Hamilton, while not a definitive history, offers an excellent collection of narratives, letters and primary sources that deal with slavery in North America through to Reconstruction.

The narratives of enslaved Africans used to be the exclusive business of academia. Even in most classrooms today, we hear the most prominent success stories, such as Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman. Hamilton offers to young readers the exploits of others like Douglass and Tubman who have rich stories to tell. Each tale tells of individuals or groups which add layer upon layer of detail to the narrative of American slavery.

Gabriel Prosser, for example, led an unsuccessful slave revolt in Virginia in 1800 and was hanged for his efforts. Tice Davids led an escape in 1831–the same year Nat Turner led his famous slave uprising–that coined the term “underground road”, later to be modernized as “underground railroad.” Olaudah Equiano, an African prince sold into slavery in the 18th Century, bought his freedom and became an important early abolitionist with his best-selling account of his live in bondage. It was probably the first time whites in Europe and America bought so many volumes penned by an author of color.

There are even moments of humor and laughter among the dark stories. Henry “Box” Brown, for instance, decided to mail himself away from his master disguised in a wooden mail crate. His story almost reads like a Three Stooges short, as he is bounced around his box by the wagon rides from Virginia to Philadelphia, where he finally gained his freedom. It seems so funny until you realize how deadly serious the stakes were for runaways.

Two areas of special importance addressed in Hamilton’s work are the horrors of the Middle Passage and the Canadian role in slavery. The Middle Passage, the harrowing kidnap and voyage from Africa to the slave markets in Brazil, the Caribbean and North America are given fresh voices from previously unknown sources. Besides Equiano, one of the earlier stories is of a young African boy who winds up in a bad situation and gets sold to a Dutch slaver–showing how something as innocuous as bad luck can have devastating circumstances.

I, for one, am particularly pleased that Hamilton did not let Canada off the hook when it came to slavery in the British dominions. For decades, Canada has lorded its role as the terminus of the Underground Railroad for enslaved Africans fleeing the United States. Its own issues with slavery have been kept in the dark until now. Remember that the British Empire did not outlaw the slave trade until 1807, and slavery itself was not abolished until 1833, when the monetary needs of the great sugar planters in the Caribbean colonies were met. British North America had a full two centuries of experience with slavery, and several stories–including accounts of runaways–show that slavery was indeed alive and well in present-day Canada.

This makes a wonderful narrative account for a classroom. In the pictures and facts about the period, the study of slavery can often be as brutal as the institution itself. These accounts make for magnificent storytelling, which can accent any social studies lesson. More importantly, Hamilton’s work adds flesh and blood to a tragic era of our history.

That flesh and blood, no matter how confusing or jarring it may seem, is the essence of this story.