The Zorg

By: Siddharth Kara

Published by St. Martin's Publishing Group, 2025-10-14

<p><b>From Pulitzer finalist and <i>New York Times </i>bestselling author of <i>Cobalt Red</i>: A notorious slave ship incident that led to the abolition of slavery in the UK and sparked the US abolitionist movement<br></b><br>In late October 1780, a slave ship set sail from the Netherlands, bound for Africa’s Windward and Gold Coasts, where it would take on its human cargo. The <i>Zorg </i>(a Dutch word meaning “care”) was one of thousands of such ships, but the harrowing events that ensued on its doomed journey were unique.<br><br>After reaching Africa, the <i>Zorg </i>was captured by a privateer and came under British command. With a new captain and crew, the ship was crammed with 442 slaves and departed in 1781 for Jamaica. But a series of unpredictable weather events and mistakes in navigation left the ship drastically off course and running out of water. So a proposition was put forth: Save the crew and the most valuable of the slaves—by throwing dozens of people, starting with women and children, overboard.<br><br>What followed was a fascinating legal drama in England’s highest court that turned the brutal calculus of slavery into front-page news. The case of the <i>Zorg</i> catapulted the nascent anti-slavery movement from a minor evangelical cause to one of the most consequential moral campaigns in history—sparking the abolitionist movement in both England and the young United States<br><br>Siddharth Kara utilizes primary-source research, gripping storytelling, and painstaking investigation to uncover the <i>Zorg</i>’s journey, the lives and fates of the slaves on board, and the mysterious identity of the abolitionist who finally revealed the truth of what happened on the ship.</p>