The Ship
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| The Slave Ship Painting |
The
Zong ship was constructed to carry 250 slaves per voyage but due to the selfish
urge and greed to make more profits the ship was over the required capacity,
with a total of 470 slaves. It was so congested that it was said the slaves had
“less room than in a coffin”. The
conditions were so inhumane and slaves were
require to go for their nature calls on themselves.
Due
to these unhygienic condition, malnutrition and other factors there was an
outbreak of a plague. Crew members and slaves begun to die and a total of sixty
slaves and seven white people died. Luke Collingwood was worried that the more
slaves died, the more the proceeds from the sale of the human cargo was reduced and the less the commission
he will get from the sale.
Collingwood
called for a crew meeting and alleged that there was a leakage on the water
storage tanks. To ensure sufficient water for the crew and slaves and they are
to pick the slaves they perceived sick and dying and throw them alive into the
sea.
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| Trans Atlantic Trade(Triangular Trade) |
The Massacre
On
reaching Jamaica the remaining slaves were sold.
The ship went to Britain. The
owners of the ship made their insurance claim on ground of “necessity” that
cargo was “jettisoned to sea to save the remainder” and therefore were eligible
for insurance compensation. The Insurer disputed it and refused to settle. The Insurer claimed it was not a necessity. The Insured moved to court. The court ruled in favor of
the Insured. The insurer appealed (Gregson V. Gilbert (1783) 3 Doug. KB 232(Zong Case)) to the Chief Justice.
The
Case
The
case and the incidence of what had happened caught the attention of Olaudah
Equiano a famous former slave, who was now an abolitionist. Equiano approached
Granville Sharp, an English man and leading campaigner against slave trade. Equiano told him the horrific incidence of the Zong Ship.
Sharp took great interest in the case and hired a typist who they would go to the court hearings with and the typist typed everything that was said in the court during the hearings. And actually much of historic material of the case is from the typist work. Sharp, though not a lawyer and once confessed to having ‘never opened a law book’, had previously earned prominence as abolitionist in the case of Somerset V. Stewart(1772) where he had assisted a slave, Somerset obtain orders of Habeas corpus and thereafter orders preventing his master, Stewart from forcefully sending him overseas to slavery. The court had ruled in this case that “a slave becomes free the moment he set foot on English territory.” However, the ruling did not end slavery.
Sharp took great interest in the case and hired a typist who they would go to the court hearings with and the typist typed everything that was said in the court during the hearings. And actually much of historic material of the case is from the typist work. Sharp, though not a lawyer and once confessed to having ‘never opened a law book’, had previously earned prominence as abolitionist in the case of Somerset V. Stewart(1772) where he had assisted a slave, Somerset obtain orders of Habeas corpus and thereafter orders preventing his master, Stewart from forcefully sending him overseas to slavery. The court had ruled in this case that “a slave becomes free the moment he set foot on English territory.” However, the ruling did not end slavery.
During
the case arguments of the Zong Case, the attorney of the insured notoriously
argued that throwing the slaves overboard was “the same as if assets had been
thrown” and that the captain would do this without any scintilla of guilt
because it is the most reasonable thing to so and the insurer are liable to pay.
The
insurance attorney argued that on investigation, that there was indeed
sufficient water in the ship and “no person in the ship had been put on short
water allowance at any moment” and in the second day after throwing slaves
overboard “plentiful rain fell” but the captain persisted in throwing 36 slaves
overboard the next day. Further on reaching their destination there was still
sufficient water in the ship. This was in fact true.
On
revelation of these facts it was clear that the captain was defrauding the
insurer. That he had placed profits before live. In deed it was an “act of necessity”
to to save profits by murder.
Granville
Sharp, was keen in attending the hearings with the intention to bring murder
charges against the captain and the crew and the ship owners.
Sharp
presence in the hearings did not go unnoticed. The attorneys for the insured knowing
his intentions of bringing murder charges against their clients violently
exclaimed, there is “a person in this court who intend to bring criminal
prosecution for murder against the parties, [this] would be madness; the blacks
were property.” To this attorney it was
not lives that were lost, it was assets; it was profits.
The
attorneys of the insurance company noting Sharp presence stated that the “crew
ought to be tried for murder” that “the life of one man is like the life of
another man, whatever the complexion is” and deciding who to die to save
another cannot be used as a ground for an act of necessity; that as long as
there was water in the ship all “men were as much entitled to their [lives] as
the captain or any other man whatsoever.”
The attorney informed the court that the court should not look at the
case as just as a claim for compensation but it was “for millions of mankind; for the cause of humanity in general.” This was indeed true, slaves were considered as chattels and property. Therefore, slaves could be insured. Therefore , by
giving a judgment to consider slaves as humans it would save millions of
slaves from being jettisoned from slave ships.
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| Granville Sharp |
Lord
Mansfield was the Chief Justice and judge on this appeal.
Lord Mansfield was a celebrated commercial law Lawyer and Judge. He was reluctant to give a definitive judgment on slavery on fear that it would affect the commercial activity, since the English commercial activity was built and relied on slave trade and in fact 80% of Britain’s foreign income was based on slave trade and therefore making a definitive judgment that Slaves were not assets would cause commercial confusion and economic decline, therefore he gave a vague decision and went on to give the infamous statement that he “had no doubt that the case of the slaves was the same as if horses had been thrown overboard.” In short to him slaves were just chattels who could be dealt with as such to save profits.
Lord Mansfield was a celebrated commercial law Lawyer and Judge. He was reluctant to give a definitive judgment on slavery on fear that it would affect the commercial activity, since the English commercial activity was built and relied on slave trade and in fact 80% of Britain’s foreign income was based on slave trade and therefore making a definitive judgment that Slaves were not assets would cause commercial confusion and economic decline, therefore he gave a vague decision and went on to give the infamous statement that he “had no doubt that the case of the slaves was the same as if horses had been thrown overboard.” In short to him slaves were just chattels who could be dealt with as such to save profits.
But
due to the new evidence of availability of water on jettisoning slaves out of
the ship the case was returned for retrial. There is no available evidence to
indicate if the retrial ever took place.
The Zong Aftermath
Granville
Sharp intention to bring murder charges never took off but he documented the
Zong Incident, wrote letters to leaders and readers and newspaper outlets who
reported the incident. The public became aware about this incidence and “the
circumstances of the most inhuman murder” in the pretense of necessity and it incidence caused a lot of annoyance to the public. “It opened the eyes of the British public to the selfish cruelty
of the slave trade more than any other.” In giving the case publicity, Sharp
would pose the question “[why] were the heart so hard and the head so inaccessible
that did not instantly take part against such a state of things, in a country
of which the enlightened laws and impartial justice were acknowledged as the
boast of human wisdom and pattern of human freedom?”…. people felt challenge and compelled to
take action and give justice to slaves.
Sharp
gave utmost publicity to the circumstances that had happened. His efforts,
research and ideas would influence and be taken up by people such as Thomas Clarkson,
who would write an award winning essay on abolition of slavery that would influence
William Wilberforce who took “suppression of slave trade” as his calling for
life by God.
Wilberforce
made numerous speeches in parliament to convince members to pass an Act to end
slavery. It was difficult since most Parliamentarians were active slave traders
and owners. Once in his trying to
convince them to change to other forms of business he said “Let not parliament be the only body that is insensible
to the principle of National Justice… Let us make reparation to Africa, so far
as we can, by establishing a trade upon true commercial principles, and we
shall soon find the rectitude of our conduct rewarded by the benefits of a
regular and growing commerce.”
Wilberforce
would work tirelessly for about 50 years to ensure an Act of Slavery Abolition
is passed. In 1807 parliament passed the Slave Trade Act
that ended slave trade and in 1833 while on his death bed he received the news
that Parliament had passed the Slavery Abolition Act, 1833 and
three days of receiving this news he died.
The
abolition of slavery campaign and success in Britain had ripple effect, in
America where slavery would also be abolished in 18656. Sharp efforts to end slavery
would be recognized in America by prominent personality such John Adams, Dr.
Franklin, John Jay who would write letters of congratulations to Sharp. Sharp would
receive honorary Doctors of Law degree from University of Cambridge,
Massachusetts etc.
The
campaign against slavery “proved to be the world’s first grassroots human
rights campaign, in which men and women from different social classes and
background volunteered to try to end the Injustice suffered by others.” It led to
the realization and development of the Universal Human Rights. Where Individual rights are
recognized and the recognition that the society and government exists to ensure individual rights
and freedoms are protected and guaranteed.
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| Abolitionist Medallion |
The thorn of slavery will remain on the humanity flesh for years and should remain there to remind us of our capacity to degrade our fellow humans.
In
this 21st Centrury, more than 230 years after the Zong case, we
still see similar incidences; where profits are placed before human, where companies sell
poison for food in the name of profits, where environment is destroyed in the
name of civilization, where pharmaceutical companies use humans as test tubes
to make profitable drugs, where wars are created for economic advantage yet
lives are lost, where election violence is the tool for a “democratic”
election. And we see the society and goverments at large being blind to these issues.
The
society shall never lack its own, Olaudah Equiano, Granville Sharp, Thomas
Clarkson, William Wilberforce etc to point out the injustice in our society and
change the normal course of history and curve the arc of humanity to the
direction of justice. The government may be blind to many unjust issues in the society
like Lord Mansfield was due to concentration on the commercial and economic
implication but the society should never let the likes of Luke Collingwood to
walk scot-free at the expense of human life.
The
likes of Luke Collingwood are the companies that pollute our environment in the
name of profits, they are the corrupt judiciary that takes bribes and forsake
justice, they are the racist that judge
people by the complexity of their skin rather than the content of their
character, they are the billionaires that see human as a tool to make more billions,
they are the human traffickers who see human as tools of labor and illicit
pleasure, they are the politicians who sponsor violence in the name of
retention of political power and maintenance of status quo. But this likes of
Luke Collingwood need to be met by the likes of Sharp who see and seek humanity for
everyone, the likes of Wangari Mathai who speak truth to power, the likes of
Thomas Sankara who see a better country with gender inclusion, the like of
Malala Yousafzai who see education as a tool to
end terrorism, the likes of Abraham
Lincon who will fight for unity in the midst of division, the likes of Martin
Luther who led marches to freedom, the likes of Nelson Mandel who will
persistently make the long walk to freedom, the likes of you and me who see a
better today and tomorrow.
Your
voice and action are the much needed effort to make this world a better place.
You may never be recognized or celebrated as William Willberforce or Sharp or Nelson Mandela was but as The Solicitor- General would
say of Mr. Wilberforce on passing the Slave
Trade Act, that “when [we] look to the man at the head of the French Monarchy(
Napoleon), surrounded as he was with all the pomp and power, and all the pride
and victory,…when he sat upon his throne, to reach the summit of human ambition
and the pinnacle of earthly happiness and when we follow that man into his
closet or to his bed and consider the pangs with which his solitude must be
torturing to him and his repose banished by the recollection of the blood he
had spilled, and the oppression he had committed and when we compare the pangs
of remorse, the feelings which must accompany Mr. Wilberforce from [parliament]
to his home, after the vote has confirmed the object of his humane and
unceasing labours [of passing the Slave Trade Act]; when he should retire into the bosom of his happy and
delighted family, when he should lay
himself down on his bed, reflecting on the innumerable, voices that would be
raised in every quarter of the world to bless him; how much more pure and perfect
felicity must he enjoy in the consciousness of having preserved so many
millions of his fellow-creatures, than the man with whom we [have] compared him,
on the throne to which he had waded through slaughter and oppression.”
Pictures by: Howell History, Wikipedia, Micahc,
Reference Material: British Law Report,
Pictures by: Howell History, Wikipedia, Micahc,
Reference Material: British Law Report,
