Library Journal
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The 1781 tragedy that unfolded aboard the Zorg, a Dutch ship used to transport enslaved Africans, provided the spark for the first abolitionist movement in Great Britain. After spending months along the African coast filling its cargo hold, in March 1781, the Zorg was captured by British privateers and set sail for Jamaica with over 380 enslaved people crammed below its decks. By late November, after an exceptionally long voyage while running short of provisions, the ship's crew threw roughly 130 men and women, plus a child, into the sea. Including deaths by disease and suicide, the mortality rate for this voyage exceeded 50 percent. Kara (sociology and social policy, Univ. of Nottingham; Cobalt Red) details how the presumptive enslavers' insurance claims for the people who were murdered outraged Britons and fomented one of the world's first successful abolition campaigns, with enslavement finally being outlawed in England in 1807. Based on extensive primary research, this powerful tale about greed and cruelty highlights the nearly forgotten story that launched a key campaign against enslavement. VERDICT Readers interested in the study of enslavement and maritime history will seek out this title.—Chad E. Statler

Publishers Weekly
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In this enthralling and elegant history, Pulitzer finalist Kara (Cobalt Red) revisits the notorious 1781 voyage of the British slave ship Zorg, also known as the Zong. Near its destination in Jamaica, the crew threw overboard 132 of the 443 slaves they were transporting, including children and babies, later asserting they did it to conserve drinking water. The investors’ insurance claim for the murdered slaves led to an explosive London court case, and the massacre became an abolitionist rallying cry. Kara makes the incident partly into an age-of-sail epic of bad luck and hubris: delayed for over a month by storms and amateurish navigation mistakes, the ship’s inexperienced captain failed to properly inventory water supplies. But even more so, Kara’s account is a stomach-churning study in slavery’s demented economic calculus as he seeks to prove what many abolitionists charged at the time: that the crew murdered the most weakened slaves just before docking because their insured value was greater than the price they would fetch at market. However, Kara intriguingly pegs as the crime’s mastermind not the captain, but the ship’s only passenger, disgraced former British colonial governor Robert Stubbs, whose sinister earlier dealings in Africa form a major through line of the narrative. The result is both a harrowing glimpse of slavery’s horrors and an incisive investigation into one of history’s most reviled crimes. (Oct.)

Kirkus
Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Mass murder aboard a slave transport, half-forgotten today but an iconic event. Historian Kara, author ofCobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives, reminds readers that slave commerce began in Africa, where tribes made war on neighboring tribes and sold captives to European and American entrepreneurs at fortified depots rented from African rulers along the west coast. He opens in Britain, 1780, when trade was hobbled by American rebels and their European allies whose privateers were seizing British ships. TheZorg, the book’s subject, was a Dutch merchant vessel captured by the British. (“Zorg” means “care” in Dutch—“an unintended irony,” Kara writes.) Purchased by a slave entrepreneur, it was crewed by 17 men of varying competence, carelessly stocked with food and water, and vastly overcrowded with 442 captives. This might not have mattered, but bad weather and navigation errors prolonged the crossing, and when the water supply seemed critically low, the crew threw 130 Africans overboard. Readers may cringe, but no problem arose until the owners asked their insurer to reimburse them for the drowned Africans, and the company refused. The owners sued, and a British jury decided that the insurer must pay. That might have ended matters, but an article appeared in a London newspaper describing these events. No abolition movement as such then existed, yet a scattering of individuals were working to that end, including Kara’s hero, Granville Sharp, a civil servant and polymath who sprang into action and, in cooperation with the insurers, succeeded in obtaining a new trial. Kara hails their victory but deplores the judge’s opinion. The Africans had been drowned because of crew incompetence, he ruled. That was unacceptable. Had the ship been stocked and navigated properly it would have been OK. Despite this, the publicity converted many Britons to abolition; the British slave trade was finally outlawed in 1807 and the empire’s slavery in 1838. A vivid historical footnote, but also a milestone. Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.