Latest / The Atlantic Slave Trade: Empire Built on Human Suffering — Fexingo History / The 1781 Zong Massacre: Insurance Fraud and the Calculus of Cruelty
Transcript
- Lucas: Luna, we've talked about a lot of revolts and rebellions — Stono, Amistad, Demerara. But today I want to look at an event that wasn't a rebellion at all. It was a massacre, and it happened on board a British slave ship called the Zong, in 1781. Luna: The Zong — I've heard the name. That's where they threw people overboard for insurance money, right? Lucas: Exactly. But the details are even more chilling than that headline. The Zong was a Dutch-built ship that had been taken as a prize by the British and then repurposed for the slave trade. She left the coast of Africa in August 1781 with 442 enslaved Africans — far more than she could safely carry. The captain was a man named Luke Collingwood, and he had been the ship's surgeon, not a captain, before this voyage. Lucas: Because of a navigational error — Collingwood mistook Jamaica for Hispaniola — the ship overshot its destination and ended up off the coast of Barbados. By then, fresh water was running low, and disease had already killed several crew and many enslaved people. Collingwood called a meeting with his officers and proposed a solution: throw the sickest enslaved people overboard and claim them as 'lost cargo' under maritime insurance. Luna: Wait, so he deliberately killed them to file an insurance claim? Lucas: That's the core of it. Under the law of 'general average' — a principle in maritime insurance — if cargo was jettisoned to save the ship from peril, the insurers had to cover the loss. But enslaved people were considered cargo. Collingwood argued that if the slaves died of thirst, the insurers wouldn't pay, because that was a 'natural' loss. But if they were thrown overboard to save the rest of the ship, the loss would be covered. Lucas: So on November 29, 1781, the crew began throwing enslaved Africans overboard. They did it in batches over three days. The first group — about 54 people — were chained and pushed into the sea. Then a second group of 42. Then a third of 36. And there was one more — a woman who was thrown overboard with her child, but the child was actually already dead. In total, 133 people were murdered. Luna: And the crew just watched? Did anyone object? Lucas: Interestingly, yes. The first mate, James Kelsall, initially refused to participate, saying it would be murder. But Collingwood threatened him, and he complied. Another crew member, Robert Stubbs, later testified that after the first batch, some of the enslaved people tried to climb back up the ropes — and the crew just beat them off. When the ship reached Jamaica, the owners — a Liverpool syndicate called Gregson & Co. — filed an insurance claim for the lost 'cargo.' Luna: So they actually tried to collect insurance money for people they'd killed? Lucas: Yes. And at first, the insurers refused to pay. They said the slaves had been murdered, not jettisoned. So Gregson & Co. sued them in London. The case was Gregson v. Gilbert, and it came before Lord Mansfield — the same judge who had ruled in the Somersett case a decade earlier, which had effectively ended slavery in England itself. But here, Mansfield ruled on strictly commercial law. He said that if the jettison was necessary for the safety of the ship, the insurers had to pay. Luna: So the court basically said it was legal to throw people overboard? Lucas: The jury found in favour of the ship owners. But — and this is key — a retrial was ordered because Mansfield suspected the insurance claim might be fraudulent. He pointed out that the ship had actually reached Barbados and taken on water, so the 'peril' might not have been genuine. In the end, the retrial never happened, and the case was dropped. But by then, the story had leaked out. Lucas: An abolitionist named Granville Sharp — we've talked about him before — got wind of the case. He tried to have the crew prosecuted for murder, but the attorney general ruled that since the deaths happened at sea, outside English jurisdiction, no charges could be brought. So Sharp switched tactics. He published the details of the massacre, and he used it as propaganda to shock the British public. Luna: That makes sense — this was before the big abolition campaigns really took off, right? Lucas: Exactly. The Zong massacre became a rallying cry. By the 1780s, the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade was forming, and figures like Thomas Clarkson and Olaudah Equiano used the Zong as a vivid example of the slave trade's inhumanity. It was one of the events that turned public opinion against the trade. The idea that human beings were being reduced to cargo — literally priced at thirty pounds a head — was deeply shocking. Lucas: And there's a dark footnote: Collingwood died before the retrial could happen. He never faced justice. But the Zong itself — the ship — was later used again in the slave trade, and eventually sank off the coast of Jamaica in 1790. So the story has layers: it's about the cold calculus of profit, the legal gymnastics that allowed murder, and the way a single atrocity can fuel a movement. Luna: It's incredible how the same legal system that ruled against slavery in the Somersett case could also uphold this kind of horror. Lucas: That's the paradox. Mansfield saw enslaved people as property in one context and as human beings in another. But the Zong case also shows how the abolitionists learned to use the system's own logic against it. They didn't just moralise — they exposed the brutality of the trade in concrete, undeniable terms. Lucas: And it makes you think about what we choose to remember. The Zong is not as famous as the Amistad or the Haitian Revolution, but it's just as important — maybe more so, because it shows the ordinary, bureaucratic evil of the slave trade. It wasn't a one-time rebellion, it was a routine business decision. Luna: Yeah — and speaking of ordinary people supporting this work, Lucas, I've been thinking about how episodes like this exist because listeners help keep the show ad-free. If anyone wants to support us, there's a simple way. Lucas: Absolutely. For those who've been stepping into history with us episode by episode, the show is entirely listener-supported. We don't run ads. If you'd like to be part of that, you can go to buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. Nothing urgent, no pressure. It just helps us keep doing deep dives into these overlooked moments. Luna: And it lets us keep telling stories like the Zong — stories that need to be told. So, Lucas, what happened after the Zong? How did the abolitionists turn this into a campaign? Lucas: Well, Granville Sharp didn't stop with the Zong. He pushed for a parliamentary inquiry, and he corresponded with other abolitionists. By 1787, the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade was founded. And in 1788, the Dolben Act was passed — the first law regulating the number of enslaved people that could be carried on a ship, based on its tonnage. It was a direct response to the overcrowding that led to the Zong massacre. Luna: So the Zong actually led to legislative change, even if it took time. Lucas: It did. The Dolben Act was a small step, but it established the principle that the state could regulate the slave trade. And over the next two decades, the abolition movement grew stronger, culminating in the 1807 Abolition Act. The Zong was the spark that showed people the trade's true face. It's a grim reminder that sometimes progress comes from confronting the worst of what we've done. Luna: Thanks for walking us through that, Lucas. It's a heavy episode, but an important one. Lucas: Thanks for listening, Luna. Next time, we'll look at something a bit different — the role of African kingdoms in the trade, and how the Asante and Dahomey empires were both victims and participants. It's a complicated story, but one worth telling.