Because the Zong massacre trial was heard in a British Court, I do not discuss it in my book. In 1781, the crew of the British slave ship The Zong threw over 130+ enslaved Africans overboard to claim insurance money for “lost cargo.” Lord Mansfield, Britain’s Chief Justice, presided over the case. There is a 2013 movie, Belle, that touches on the massacre.
What makes the Zong massacre especially striking is that it was not initially treated as a murder case, but as an insurance dispute over lost property. The fact that more than 130 enslaved Africans were thrown overboard for financial gain shows how slavery was legally and economically structured to value profit over human life. Even with someone as prominent as Lord Mansfield presiding, the focus of the case centered on insurance claims rather than justice for the victims. Learning that this happened in a British court also highlights how deeply entrenched slavery was across legal systems, not just in the United States. The fact that the story still needs to be revisited through films like Belle shows how important it is to continue confronting this history and its moral consequences.
At first, when I heard about the quick history of the Zong massacre, I thought of how inefficient the British ship operated, since if the ships were packed and the spread of disease was likely, then by the end of the voyage, everyone would be dead. I changed my mind after hearing how the sailors and the captain used disease as leverage to gain additional money from insurance companies. Perhaps, there was an actual underlying purpose for overpacking the ship… “lost cargo” was very valuable, wasn’t it? I wasn’t familiar with this topic before, and I am curious about what else ship owners were allowed to do to be compensated for the property they lost during their sea voyage.