THE ZONG MASSACRE, 1781

The ZONG MASSACRE was a mass killing of 132 African enslaved people by the crew of the British slaver ship Zong.
The slave ship Zong departed the coast of Africa on 6 September 1781 with 470 slaves. To maximize pro ts, the captain,
Luke Collingwood, overloaded his ship with slaves and by 29 November many of them had begun to die from disease and
malnutrition. The Zong then sailed in an area in the mid-Atlantic known as “the Doldrums” because of periods of little or no
wind.  As the ship sat stranded, sickness caused the deaths of seven of the 17 crew members and over 50 slaves. Increa-
singly desperate, Collingwood decided to “jettison” some of the cargo in order to save the ship and provide the ship ow-
ners the opportunity to claim for the loss on their insurance. Over the next week the remaining crew members threw 132
slaves who were sick and dying over the side. Another 10 slaves threw themselves overboard in what Collingwood later
described as an “Act of De ance.”

Upon the Zong’s arrival in Jamaica, James Gregson, the ship’s owner, led an insurance claim for their loss. Gregson ar-
gued that the Zong did not have enough water to sustain both crew and the human commodities.
The insurance underwriter, Thomas Gilbert, disputed the claim citing that the Zong had 420 gallons of water aboard when
she was inventoried in Jamaica. Despite this the Jamaican court in 1782 found in favour of the owners. The insurers ap-
pealed the case in 1783 and in the process provoked a great deal of public interest and the attention of Great Britain’s abo-
litionists.  The leading abolitionist at the time, Granville Sharp, used the deaths of the slaves to increase public awareness
about the slave trade and further the anti-slavery cause.  It was he who rst used the word massacre.

Following the rst trial, Olaudah Equiano, a freedman, brought news of the massacre to the attention of the anti-slavery
campaigner Granville Sharp, who worked unsuccessfully to have the ship's crew prosecuted for murder. Because of the le-
gal dispute, reports of the massacre received increased publicity, stimulating the abolitionist movement in the late 18th and
early 19th centuries; the Zong events were increasingly cited as a powerful symbol of the horrors of the Middle Passage, the
transoceanic route by which enslaved Africans were brought to the New World.
The non-denominational Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade was founded in 1787. The next year, Parlia-
ment passed the Slave Trade Act 1788, its rst law regulating the slave trade, to limit the number of slaves per ship. Then, in
1791, Parliament prohibited insurance companies from reimbursing ship owners when enslaved Africans were murdered by
being thrown overboard.

Slave Trade Act, 1807 was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom prohibiting the slave trade in the British Empire.
Although it did not abolish the practice of slavery, it did encourage British action to press other nation states to abolish their
own slave trades. The Act created nes for ship captains who continued with the trade. These nes could be up to £100 per
enslaved person found on a ship. Captains would sometimes dump captives overboard when they saw Navy ships coming
in order to avoid these nes.[22] The Royal Navy, which then controlled the world's seas, established the West Africa
Squadron in 1808 to patrol the coast of West Africa, and between 1808 and 1860 they seized approximately 1,600 slave
ships and freed 150,000 Africans who were aboard.[23][3] The Royal Navy declared that ships transporting slaves would be
treated the same as pirates.

Slavery Abolition Act, 1833, in British history, act of Parliament that abolished slavery in most British colonies, freeing
more than 800,000 enslaved Africans in the Caribbean and South Africa as well as a small number in Canada. It received
Royal Assent on August 28, 1833, and took effect on August 1, 1834.
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 How Percy Shelley Stirred His Politics Into His Teacup
The great Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Sheley was also a radical thinker — and his revolutionary poli-
tics stormed in his teacup. Slender of build and Spartan in habit, the tall, fair-haired poet had no taste
for rich foods or wine. A vegetarian who shuddered at animal slaughter — though there were lapses
into muttonchops and bacon — Shelley was an indi erent eater. But the one beverage to which he
was addicted was tea. His appetite for tea was limitless. Presumably, Shelley would have loved to
load his cup with sugar — he had a strong sweet tooth.

However, sugar came to epitomize the evils of slavery. In the liberal circles Shelley moved in, eating
sugar was about as acceptable as displaying tusks of ivory in one's living room is today.

In 1791, the year before Shelley was born, the abolitionist William Fox published his anti-sugar pam-
phlet, which called for a boycott of sugar grown by slaves working in inhuman conditions in the Bri-
tish-governed West Indies. "In every pound of sugar used, we may be considered as consuming two
ounces of human esh," wrote Fox. So powerful was his appeal that close to 400,000 Britons gave up
sugar.

The SUGAR BOYCOTT became a highly political act.Soon, grocers stopped selling West Indies su-
gar and began to sell "East Indies sugar" from India. Those who bought this sugar were careful to
broadcast their virtue by serving it in bowls imprinted with the words "not made by slave labor," in
much the same way that co ee today is advertised as fair-trade, or eggs as free-range.

Leading the boycott were the Romantic poets Coleridge and Shelley; in his rst long poem, Queen
Mab, Shelley evokes plantation slaves toiling "to the sound of the esh-mangling scourge" to produce
"all-polluting luxury and wealth."

Both Shelley and his second wife, Mary, abstained from sugar and drank green tea instead. According
to Mary Shelley's biographer Miranda Seymour, the lonely and misunderstood monster in Mary's 1818
masterpiece, Frankenstein, is based on the African slaves she saw being worked at the quays in Bri-
stol, a major slave port at the time. Mary's father, William Godwin — a radical socialist philosopher at
the forefront of the antislavery movement, and Shelley's mentor — enjoyed a strong smoky green tea
known as Gunpowder.

As for P.b. Shelley, for the most part, though, the poet seems to have maneuvered around the need for
the sweet stu in his cup by drinking only the best, most expensive green tea. Althoguh full of debts,
Shelley he insisted on having the nest tea shipped to Italy when he and Mary moved there for the last
four years of his life. It was, Mary explained, a necessity, as "Townley tea" — a common brand — "was
tried and found wanting."

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