In August 1781, a British slave ship, the Zong, left Ghana with 442 slaves aboard – twice the number it was designed to carry – bound for Jamaica. The ship’s owners claimed that due to navigational errors, it took longer than anticipated to reach Jamaica, and as water was running low, the crew threw more than 130 live slaves overboard. The truth of what happened is disputed and evidence suggested that rain meant the ship had enough water.
As was common practice, the ship owners had taken out insurance for their “cargo” of enslaved people. When news of the massacre reached England, they made a claim for compensation. The insurers refused to pay and the ship owners took them to court.
The case demonstrates how the law facilitated the trans-Atlantic slave trade, but also strengthened the campaign for abolition. It was, says James Walvin, author of the book The Zong, and professor emeritus of history at the University of York, “mass murder masquerading as an insurance claim”.
