The Zorg : a tale of greed, murder and the abolition of slavery /Siddharth Kara.

"The Zorg tells the shocking true story of one of the most consquential ships that ever crossed the Atlantic. This riveting account of its voyage in 1781-2 distils centuries of the Atantic slave trade into a single journey, which catapulted the nascent anti-slavery movement into one of the most important moral campaigns that altered the course of history. When a series of unpredictable weather events and navigational errors led to the Zorg sailing off course and running low on supplies, the crew's solution was to throw more than a hundred slaves overboard to save themselves and the most valuable slaves, only for the ship's owners to claim this on insurance. These appalling events might never have come to light, but the insurance claim ended up[ in court, where the proceedings were recorded by a bystander whow as moved to write an anonymous letter to the prerss, and a fresh trial was instigated. For the first time, concepts suich as human rights and morality entered the disocurce on slavery in a court case that noiuled down to a simple yet profound question: Were the Africans on board people or cargo? By the time its journey ended, the Zorg had become the first undeniable argument againstr slavery. It was the one slave ship to stand for them all."--