29th November 1781: The Zong Massacre sees 132 Africans thrown overboard by the crew of a slave ship скачать в хорошем качестве

29th November 1781: The Zong Massacre sees 132 Africans thrown overboard by the crew of a slave ship

Zong was originally a Dutch slave ship that had been captured by a British gunship in February 1781. Having been sold to a syndicate of Liverpool merchants, it departed from Accra in modern day Ghana on 18 August. 442 slaves were on board the ship at this point – more than twice the number that it was capable of safely transporting. By the third week of November drinkable water was running low, but this was not identified until after a navigational error led to the ship sailing 300 miles past its destination of Jamaica. With death from thirst a high likelihood, the ship’s crew voted to purposefully drown some of the slaves in order to ensure the survival of the ones remaining on board. The massacre began on 29 November and continued for two more days. Due to deaths from disease and malnutrition, in addition to the wilful mass murder, the ship arrived at Jamaica with only 208 of its original 442 enslaved people on board. The ship’s insurers refused to pay out for the deaths of the slaves and the ensuing court cases found that the killing of slaves was legal in some situations. In the case of Zong, however, the court ruled that the crew of the Zong were at fault and found in the insurers’ favour. The massacre and subsequent legal rulings had little immediate impact. Within just a few years, however, the Zong massacre had become a central example of the horrors of the Middle Passage and stimulated the abolitionist movement.