The Zong massacre was a horrific atrocity that occurred in late 1781, primarily on November 29, when the crew of the British slave ship Zong murdered more than 130 enslaved Africans by throwing them overboard.
Details of the Massacre
The Zong, a severely overcrowded ship, had encountered navigational errors and was running low on drinking water during its voyage from the Gold Coast (modern Ghana) to Jamaica. The ship’s master, Luke Collingwood, and the crew decided to throw the enslaved people into the sea. Under maritime insurance law at the time, if enslaved people died of “natural causes” (such as disease or starvation), the owners could not claim compensation; however, the deliberate jettisoning of “cargo” to save the rest of the ship in an emergency (known as “general average”) was covered by insurance.
The crew committed the murders in three batches over several days:
- November 29, 1781: 54 women and children were thrown overboard.
- December 1, 1781: 42 men were murdered.
- Subsequent days: A third group of 36 enslaved people was killed, with an additional 10 jumping overboard themselves.
In total, approximately 132 to 142 Africans were killed during this period.
Aftermath and Legacy
The ship arrived in Jamaica on December 22, 1781, with 208 survivors who were subsequently sold into slavery. The ship’s owners in Liverpool, the Gregson syndicate, filed an insurance claim for the “lost cargo”. The insurers disputed the claim, leading to a highly publicized court case, Gregson v Gilbert, in London in 1783.
The legal proceedings focused solely on property and insurance law, not on murder, with one lawyer arguing that the case was the “same as if wood had been thrown overboard”. The public learned of the atrocity through these trials, primarily due to the efforts of the freed slave and author Olaudah Equiano, who brought the case to the attention of the abolitionist Granville Sharp.
Although no one was ever prosecuted for the murders, the widespread outrage generated by the case became a powerful rallying cry for the British abolitionist movement. The Zong massacre helped lead to the formation of the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade in 1787 and contributed to the passage of the Slave Trade Act of 1807, which abolished the British slave trade