Latest / The Atlantic Slave Trade: Empire Built on Human Suffering — Fexingo History / The Zong Massacre: Insurance Fraud and 132 Slaves Thrown Overboard
Transcript
- Lucas: So we've talked about a lot of different slave ship mutinies and rebellions on the show. The Creole, the Amistad, the Prince of Orange. But there's one ship that's famous for the opposite—no revolt at all, and yet it became one of the most infamous cases in the history of the slave trade. Luna: You're talking about the Zong, right? The one where they threw people overboard. Lucas: Exactly. The Zong massacre of 1781. And the thing is, it wasn't a mutiny or a rebellion—it was a calculated act of insurance fraud. The captain, Luke Collingwood, ordered 132 enslaved Africans thrown into the Atlantic, all so the ship's owners could file a claim. Luna: Wait, how does that work? How does killing your own cargo let you claim insurance? Lucas: It's a dark loophole in maritime insurance law. At the time, insurers would cover losses from perils of the sea—storms, shipwrecks, that sort of thing. But if enslaved people died of 'natural causes' like disease, that was considered a bad investment, not an insured loss. If, however, you could argue that you had to throw them overboard to save the ship—say, because of a water shortage—then those deaths became a 'jettison,' and the insurers had to pay. Lucas: Collingwood claimed the ship had run low on water after a navigational error, and that sacrificing the enslaved was necessary to keep the crew alive. The truth was, the ship still had plenty of water when the killings started. And they didn't just throw a few overboard—they did it in batches over several days. Luna: That's horrifying. How many died? Lucas: On the first day, they threw 54 people overboard. Then 42 more. Then 36. The ship's log records that some of the enslaved actually managed to climb back onto the ship, and they were thrown a second time. In total, 132 people were murdered. And when they finally reached port in Jamaica, the owners filed a claim. Luna: And the insurance company just paid out? Lucas: Initially, yes. The insurers, a group called Gilbert and Company, actually paid the claim. But then they started to have second thoughts. They refused to pay the full amount, and the ship's owners—a consortium from Liverpool—sued them. That case is known as Gregson v. Gilbert, and it went to trial at the Old Bailey in London. Luna: So the case wasn't about murder—it was about insurance money. Lucas: Precisely. The legal question was whether the deaths qualified as a 'peril of the sea.' The court, amazingly, ruled in favor of the ship's owners. They said that because the enslaved were property, and the captain's decision to jettison them was made in good faith, the insurers had to pay. But here's where it gets interesting: one of the judges, Lord Mansfield—the same judge who had ruled in the Somerset case a decade earlier—ordered a new trial. He was deeply uneasy about the moral implications. Luna: Lord Mansfield again. He seems to keep popping up in these stories. Lucas: He does. In Somerset v. Stewart in 1772, Mansfield had ruled that a slave brought to England could not be forcibly returned to the colonies. That didn't end slavery in England, but it made it much harder to enforce. Now, with the Zong case, Mansfield saw an opportunity to confront the slave trade directly. But the case never actually went to retrial, because the abolitionist Granville Sharp got involved. Luna: Granville Sharp—he was one of the early British abolitionists, right? Lucas: That's right. Sharp was a campaigner who had already helped secure the Somerset ruling. He heard about the Zong massacre and tried to have the ship's crew prosecuted for murder. But the attorney general at the time, Lord Beaumont, declined to press charges, saying that since the enslaved were property, you couldn't charge someone for destroying property the same way you would for murdering a person. Luna: So no one was ever held criminally accountable? Lucas: No one. But Sharp didn't give up. He published accounts of the massacre, and the case became a rallying cry for the abolitionist movement. He also got in touch with Olaudah Equiano, the former slave who had bought his own freedom and become a writer and activist. Equiano helped spread the story among the British public. Luna: And that helped turn public opinion against the slave trade. Lucas: Exactly. The Zong massacre became a symbol of the inhumanity of the slave trade. It was used by abolitionists like Thomas Clarkson and William Wilberforce to argue that the trade needed to be abolished. And it's a stark example of how the law treated enslaved people as property, not human beings. Lucas: One of the most disturbing details from the trial was the testimony of the ship's chief mate, James Kelsall. He admitted that the captain, Collingwood, had deliberately miscalculated the water supply to justify the jettison. And yet, the court still sided with the owners. Luna: It's like they were willfully blind to the humanity of the victims. Lucas: And that's why the Zong matter so much. It's not just a story of atrocity—it's a story of how legal systems can be twisted to justify inhumanity. And it's also a story of how activists like Sharp and Equiano used that legal failure to build a movement. The Zong case directly contributed to the formation of the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade in 1787. Luna: But the slave trade continued for another two decades after that. Lucas: That's true. The British didn't abolish the trade until 1807, and slavery itself in the colonies until 1834. But the Zong massacre was a turning point in the moral argument. It took the abstract concept of the Middle Passage and made it visceral—people could picture those bodies being thrown into the sea. Lucas: There's also a haunting postscript. After the trial, the ship's captain, Luke Collingwood, died—probably from illness—before he could face any further legal action. And the ship itself, the Zong, continued in service until it was eventually lost at sea. There's a grim irony there. Luna: So the Zong remains a powerful symbol, but also a legal landmark of a different kind. Lucas: It is. And it raises a question that's still relevant: how do we value human life when the law treats some people as property? That's a thread that runs through so many of these episodes. Lucas: If you've been stepping into history with us episode by episode, you know we cover these stories without ads, thanks to listeners who support the show. We're listener-funded, and it's that support that keeps these conversations going. Luna: Yeah, it really makes a difference. Even a small contribution helps us keep researching and producing these episodes. Lucas: If you'd like to help, you can find us at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. No pressure, but every bit counts. Now, back to the Zong—there's one more layer I want to talk about. Lucas: After the Zong case, there was a push to change the law so that enslaved people could not be insured for jettison. But it took a long time. In fact, it wasn't until 1799 that Parliament passed a law explicitly making it illegal to claim insurance on slaves thrown overboard. Luna: Eighteen years later. That's a lot of time for more atrocities to happen. Lucas: And they did. The slave trade continued to operate with the same brutal logic. But the Zong case helped ensure that at least one loophole was closed, and that the public could no longer ignore what was happening on those ships. Luna: It's a small step, but an important one. Lucas: Exactly. And it's a reminder that legal change often comes only after tragedy is made visible. The Zong massacre is a stark example of that.