The Zong

1
The Zong
2

• Study the list of key words, dates and names.
  How many can you accurately complete?
• a _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
• 180 _
• 18 _ 3
• p _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _t
• m _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
• _ o _ _
• _ a _ _ i _ _
• c _ _ _ _ _ _ w _ _ _ _
• f _ _ _ _
• _ _ _ _ r _ _ _ e
• _ _
• m _ _ _ _ _
• q _ _ _ _ _ _
• p _ _ _ _ _ _ n

3
AIMS To examine the case of the slave ship
Zong and the impact it had on the growing
abolitionist movement.

• Success Criteria
• You can describe what happened on board the Zong
• You can evaluate the impact it had on the
  abolitionist campaign.

4
Case Study The Zong

• On 6th September 1781 the slave ship Zong sailed
  from Africa to Jamaica. There were 17 crew and
  442 slaves on board.
• By November 7 of the crew and 60 of the slaves
  had died, many more of the slaves were ill, and
  the ships captain, Luke Collingwood, knew he
  would be unable to sell them.

5
THE PLAN

• The captain, along with the other officers,
  agreed a monstrous plan to kill the sick slaves
  and claim compensation from the ships insurance
  company for loss of cargo.
• The plan was to claim that the ship was running
  out of water and in order to save some of the
  slaves the sick ones had to be thrown overboard.
• Over the next few days at least 133 sick slaves
  some chained together, were thrown overboard.
• On 1st December 42 slaves were thrown overboard
  but the next day it rained and when the Zong
  docked in Jamaica on the 22nd it had 191 slaves
  and 420 gallons of fresh water left.

6
Key Terms

• There was huge debate about which crime Luke
  Collingwood deserved to be charged with
• Murder to intentionally kill a person
• Manslaughter the crime of killing a person when
  the person did not intend to do it
• Fraud the crime of getting money by deceiving
  people.

7

• The Ships owners claimed 30 for each dead
  slave, the insurance for the lost cargo, on the
  grounds that the ship had run out of water so
  some slaves had to be killed in order to save the
  crew and other slaves.
• The insurance company refused to pay and accused
  the ships owners of fraud and the case went to
  court.
• The owners lawyer said what is all this talk
  of human people being thrown overboard? This is
  a case of goods. It is a case about throwing
  over of goods. They (the slaves) are goods and
  property
• The Judge decided the insurers had to
• pay up.

8
Influence on the abolitionist movement

• Brief reports of the case appeared in newspapers
  but, at first, it had very little effect on
  public opinion.
• The anti-slavery campaigner Granville Sharp
  tried, unsuccessfully, to have the ship's crew
  prosecuted for murder.
• He wrote to men in high positions in politics,
  the law, the Church, anyone of influence about
  the Zong case. Sharp was determined to expose the
  killings in the hope of ending slavery itself.
  Few bothered to reply.

9

• However, Sharp did have some success.
• He sent an account of the Zong massacre to
  William Dillwyn, a Quaker, and shortly after,
  in 1783, the first anti slavery petition, signed
  by 273 Quakers, was submitted to parliament.
• Key Word Petition
• A document signed by a large number
• of people demanding action from the
• government.
• In the following years, the case was referred to
  time and again when men wrote about the slave
  trade . The Zong killings offered a powerful
  example of the horrors of the trade and
  stimulated the development of the abolitionist
  movement in Britain, which dramatically expanded
  in size and influence in the late 1780s.

10

• .
• Yet the deliberate killings of Africans during
  voyages of slave ships
• did not end following the Zong. Indeed they
  actually increased in
• the early 19th century. When Royal Navy vessels
  chased
• suspected illegal slave ships, the slavers' crews
  often threw Africans
• overboard rather than be caught with slaves on
  board and have the
• vessels impounded.