Zong massacre

Zong was the first command of Luke Collingwood, formerly the surgeon on the William.[13] While Collingwood lacked experience in navigation and command, ship's surgeons were typically involved in selecting slaves for purchase in Africa, so their medical expertise supported the determination of "commodity value" for a captive.[14] If the surgeon rejected a captive, that individual suffered "commercial death", being of no value, and was liable to be killed by the African traders.[14] Sometimes these killings happened in the presence of the surgeon. It is likely that Collingwood had already witnessed the mass-killing of enslaved people. Historian Jeremy Krikler commented, this may have prepared him psychologically to condone the massacre that took place on the Zong.[14][15][16] Zong's first mate was James Kelsall, who had also served on the William.[9]

The vessel's only passenger, Robert Stubbs, was a former captain of slave ships. In early 1780 he was appointed by the African Committee of the Royal African Company as the governor of Anomabu, a British fortification near Cape Coast Castle in Ghana.[17] This position made him also vice-president of the RAC Council of the Castle.[17] Due to his ineptitude and enmity incurred with John Roberts, governor of the Castle, Stubbs was forced out of the governorship of Anomabu by the RAC Council after nine months.[17][18] Witness statements gathered by the African Committee of the RAC accused him of being a semi-literate drunkard who mismanaged the slave-trading activities of the fort.[19] Stubbs was aboard to return to Britain; Collingwood may have thought his earlier experience on slave ships would be useful.[17]

Zong had a 17-man crew when it left Africa, which was far too small to maintain adequate sanitary conditions on the ship.[20] Mariners willing to risk disease and rebellions on slave ships were difficult to recruit within Britain and were harder to find for a vessel captured from the Dutch off the coast of Africa.[21] Zong was manned with remnants of the previous Dutch crew, the crew of William, and with unemployed sailors hired from the settlements along the African coast.[11]

Map of the Caribbean, showing Tobago, Hispaniola (red) and Jamaica (blue)

On 27 or 28 November, the crew sighted Jamaica at a distance of 27 nautical miles (50 km; 31 mi) but misidentified it as the French colony of Saint-Domingue on the island of Hispaniola.[29][30] Zong continued on its westward course, leaving Jamaica behind. This mistake was recognised only after the ship was 300 miles (480 km) leeward of the island.[29] Overcrowding, malnutrition, accidents and disease had already killed several mariners and approximately 62 Africans.[31] James Kelsall later claimed that there was only four days' water remaining on the ship, when the navigational error was discovered and Jamaica was still 10–13 sailing days away.[32]

Plan of the slave ship Brookes, carrying 454 slaves. Before the Slave Trade Act 1788, Brookes had transported 609 enslaved people and was 267 tons burden, making 2.3 enslaved people per ton. Zong carried 442 enslaved people and was 110 tons burden—4.0 enslaved people per ton.[23]

If the enslaved people died onshore, the Liverpool ship-owners would have had no redress from their insurers. Similarly, if the enslaved people died a "natural death" (as the contemporary term put it) at sea, then insurance could not be claimed. If some enslaved people were thrown overboard in order to save the rest of the "cargo" or the ship, then a claim could be made under "general average".[33] (This principle holds that a captain who jettisons part of his cargo in order to save the rest can claim for the loss from his insurers.) The ship's insurance covered the loss of enslaved people at £30  per person.[34]

On 29 November, the crew assembled to consider the proposal that some of the enslaved people should be thrown overboard.[35] James Kelsall later claimed that he had disagreed with the plan at first but it was soon unanimously agreed.[34][35] On 29 November 54 women and children were thrown through cabin windows into the sea.[36] On 1 December 42 male enslaved people were thrown overboard, and 36 more followed in the next few days.[36] Another ten, in a display of defiance at the inhumanity of the slavers, chose to commit suicide by jumping into the sea.[36] Having heard the shrieks of the victims as they were thrown into the water, one of the captives requested that the remaining Africans be denied all food and drink rather than thrown into the sea. The crew ignored this request.[37] In total, 142 Africans were killed by the time the ship reached Jamaica. The account of the King's Bench trial reports that one enslaved person managed to climb back onto the ship.[38]

The crew claimed that the enslaved people had been jettisoned because the ship did not have enough water to keep all the enslaved people alive for the rest of the voyage. This claim was later disputed, as the ship had 420 imperial gallons (1,900 l) of water left when it arrived in Jamaica on 22 December.[34] An affidavit later made by Kelsall stated that on 1 December, when 42 enslaved people were killed, it rained heavily for more than a day, allowing six casks of water (sufficient for 11 days) to be collected.[34][39]

On 22 December 1781, Zong arrived at Black River, Jamaica with 208 enslaved people on board, less than half the number taken from Africa.[36] These people were sold for an average price of £36 per person.[4] The Jamaican Vice-Admiralty court upheld the legality of the British capture of Zong from the Dutch, and the syndicate renamed the ship Richard of Jamaica.[4] Luke Collingwood died three days after Zong reached Jamaica, two years before the 1783 court proceedings about the case.[3]

Legal proceedings began when the insurers refused to compensate the owners of Zong. The dispute was initially tried at the Guildhall in London[45] on 6 March 1783, with the Lord Chief Justice, the Earl of Mansfield, overseeing the trial before a jury.[41] Mansfield was previously the judge in Somersett's Case in 1772, which concerned the legality of enslaving people in Britain. He had ruled that slavery had never been established by statute in Britain and was not supported by common law.[46]

Robert Stubbs was the only witness in the first Zong trial and the jury found in favour of the owners, under an established protocol in maritime insurance that considered slaves as cargo.[47] On 19 March 1783, Olaudah Equiano, a formerly enslaved person, told the anti-slave-trade activist Granville Sharp of the events aboard Zong and a newspaper soon carried a lengthy account, reporting that the captain had ordered the enslaved people killed in three batches.[48][49] Sharp sought legal advice the next day, about the possibility of prosecuting the crew for murder.[50]

Granville Sharp, from a drawing by George Dance

The insurers applied to the Earl of Mansfield to have the previous verdict set aside and for the case to be tried again.[51] A hearing was held at the Court of King's Bench in Westminster Hall on 21–22 May 1783, before Mansfield and two other King's Bench judges, Mr Justice Buller and Mr Justice Willes.[52] The Solicitor General, John Lee, appeared on behalf of the Zong's owners, as he had done previously in the Guildhall trial.[53] Granville Sharp was also in attendance, together with a secretary he had hired to take a written record of the proceedings.[54]

Summing up the verdict reached in the first trial, Mansfield said that the jury:

had no doubt (though it shocks one very much) that the Case of Slaves was the same as if Horses had been thrown over board ... The Question was, whether there was not an Absolute Necessity for throwing them over board to save the rest? The Jury were of opinion there was ...[55][56]

Collingwood had died in 1781 and the only witness of the massacre to appear at Westminster Hall was passenger Robert Stubbs, although a written affidavit by first mate James Kelsall was made available to the lawyers.[57] Stubbs claimed that there was "an absolute Necessity for throwing over the Negroes", because the crew feared all the enslaved people would die if they did not throw some into the sea.[58] The insurers argued that Collingwood had made "a Blunder and Mistake" in sailing beyond Jamaica and that enslaved people had been killed so their owners could claim compensation.[58] They alleged that Collingwood did this because he did not want his first voyage as a slave ship captain to be unprofitable.[59]

John Lee responded by saying that the enslaved people "perished just as a Cargo of Goods perished" and were jettisoned for the greater good of the ship.[60] The insurers' legal team replied that Lee's argument could never justify the killing of innocent people; each of the three addressed issues of humanity in the treatment of the slaves and said that the actions of Zong's crew were nothing less than murder.[60] Historian James Walvin has argued that it is possible that Granville Sharp directly influenced the strategy of the insurers' legal team.[60]

At the hearing, new evidence was heard, that heavy rain had fallen on the ship on the second day of the killings, but a third batch of enslaved people was killed after that. This led Mansfield to order another trial, because the rainfall meant that the killing of those people, after the water shortage had been eased, could not be justified in terms of the greater necessity of saving the ship and the rest of the enslaved people aboard.[61][62] One of the justices in attendance also said that this evidence invalidated the findings of the jury in the first trial, as the jury had heard testimony that the water shortage resulted from the poor condition of the ship, brought on by unforeseen maritime conditions, rather than from errors committed by its captain.[63] Mansfield concluded that the insurers were not liable for losses resulting from errors committed by Zong's crew.[64]

There is no evidence that another trial was held on this issue.[65][66] Despite Granville Sharp's efforts, no member of the crew was prosecuted for murder.[67] Yet, the Zong case did eventually gain both national and international attention. A summary of the appeal on the Zong case, was eventually published in the nominate reports prepared from the contemporaneous manuscript notes of Sylvester Douglas, Baron Glenbervie, and others. It was published in 1831 as Gregson v Gilbert (1783) 3 Doug. KB 232.[68][lower-alpha 3]

Jeremy Krikler has argued that Mansfield wanted to ensure that commercial law remained as helpful to Britain's overseas trade as possible and as a consequence was keen to uphold the principle of "general average", even in relation to the killing of humans. For Mansfield to have found in favour of the insurers would have greatly undermined this idea.[69] The revelation that rain had fallen during the period of the killings enabled Mansfield to order a retrial, while leaving the notion of "general average" intact. He emphasised that the massacre would have been legally justified and the owners' insurance claim would have been valid, if the water shortage had not arisen from mistakes made by the captain.[64]

Krikler comments that Mansfield's conclusions ignored the ruling precedent of his predecessor, Matthew Hale, that the killing of innocents in the name of self-preservation was unlawful. This ruling was to prove important a century later in R v Dudley and Stephens, which also concerned the justifiability of acts of murder at sea.[46] Mansfield also failed to acknowledge another important legal principle—that no insurance claim can be legal if it arose from an illegal act.[70]

In 2007, a memorial stone was erected at Black River, Jamaica, near where Zong would have landed.[98] A sailing ship representing Zong was sailed to Tower Bridge in London in March 2007 to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, at a cost of £300,000. The vessel housed depictions of the Zong massacre and the slave trade.[98] It was accompanied by HMS Northumberland, with an exhibition on board commemorating the role of the Royal Navy after 1807 in the suppression of the slave trade.[99]