BY STEPHEN E. SMITH
A few chapters into Siddharth Kara’s The Zorg: A Tale of Greed and Murder That Inspired the Abolition of Slavery, you might consider putting the book aside. After all, we live in a world fraught with grievance. Why burden ourselves with crimes committed 245 years ago?
The answer is obvious: Ancient injustices are the source of contemporary injustices. Cruelty begets cruelty. So you’ll likely continue reading The Zorg, despite the graphic inhumanity it depicts.
Siddharth Kara is an author and activist who studies modern slavery. He has written several books on slavery and child labor, including the New York Times bestseller and Pulitzer Prize finalist, Cobalt Red, and he has much to tell us in his thoroughly researched and skillfully crafted narrative of the Zorg massacre, which serves as a disturbing yet obligatory lesson for contemporary audiences.
In late 1780, the Zorg, a Dutch ship, set sail for Africa’s Gold Coast to take on a cargo of Africans to be sold in the New World. Such slaving enterprises were common. It’s estimated that more than 12 million captive human beings were transported on 35,000 voyages between the 16th and mid-19th centuries, so the Zorg was unusual only in the exceptional misfortunes that befell its crew and captive cargo.
After reaching its initial destination in Africa, the Zorg was captured by British privateers and the ship was loaded with more than 440 slaves, twice the number it was equipped to carry. The British captain, who had little experience commanding a slave ship, and his crew were ill-prepared to make the journey; nevertheless, they set sail for Jamaica. Poor seamanship, faulty navigation, rough seas, and a lack of food and water plagued the enterprise. The Zorg missed Jamaica and had to retrace its journey. The human cargo suffered greatly, sickness took its toll on the crew, and the ship’s water supply ran low. Eventually, the crew had to decide who would live and who would die.
The first to be tossed overboard were the women and children, followed by the weaker male captives. It was a heartless and brutal business, and 140 human beings were sacrificed for the “greater good.”
Such atrocities were not uncommon in the slave trade. Still, Kara’s graphic, novelistic description of these events is compelling without being gratuitous. The massacre of the innocent black captives will be disturbing for anyone unfamiliar with the horrors of the Middle Passage, and those readers schooled in the inhumanity of the slave trade will find themselves moved to a new level of compassion. Kara's skills as a writer and his deft storytelling bring history to life, and readers with any sense of empathy will react with genuine horror.
But the story of the Zorg doesn’t end there. When the captain, crew, and surviving slaves found their way to Jamaica, the slave-trading syndicate that had financed the voyage made a claim against the insurers of the enterprise, hoping to recoup the value of the human cargo that had been jettisoned. A trial followed, and a jury found that the murder of Africans was legal—they were simply a commodity—and the insurers must pay. Each dead slave was valued at $70, about the price of a horse.
Still, the controversy might have faded from memory—what was the loss of a few African captives?—but it was soon learned that the Zorg had arrived in Jamaica with a surplus of fresh water that had been taken aboard during a storm at sea. With the water supply replenished, the crew continued to dispose of the weaker captives so they might obtain more insurance money—in other words, the captain and crew committed insurance fraud. The verdict was appealed, and a protracted legal battle ensued between the insurers and the trading syndicate. The resulting public uproar catapulted the sensational story onto the front pages of England’s most prominent newspapers, transforming what might have been an insignificant controversy into a protracted struggle that would end the English slave trade with the Slave Trade Act 1807, which in turn ignited the abolitionist movement in the United States. It would take a cataclysmic Civil War to decide the matter in America.
Slavery may be outlawed in every country, but it persists. According to the latest Global Estimates of Modern Slavery (2022) from Walk Free, the International Labour Organization and the International Organization for Migration, 49.6 million people live in modern slavery in forced labor and forced marriage, and roughly a quarter of all victims of modern slavery are children. The concept of slavery—the notion that a dominant culture or race remains superior to a once enslaved race—has not been purged from our hearts and minds.
For readers who aren’t interested in history but are fascinated by horrific tales, The Zorg fits the bill. The Russian writer Maxim Gorky, who knew something about imprisonment and slavery, understood our fascination with the terrible. “ . . . I know of genuine horrors, everyday terrors,” he wrote, “and I have the undeniable right to excite you unpleasantly by telling you about them in order that you may know how we live and under what circumstances. A low and unclean life it is, and that is the truth. . . . one must not be sentimental, nor hide the grim truth with the motley words of beautiful lies. Let us face life as it is.”
At the very least, Kara’s skillfully crafted narrative will leave readers wondering how future generations will perceive the inequities and struggles of the tragic times in which we live.

I love when I find non-fiction books that I can recommend that covers history in a fashion that focuses on the reality of what happened, rather than just expanding on what we may have learned in school. This book made sure you didn’t forget that the act of slavery was about HUMAN BEINGS! History often gets glossed over as a story. Something that happened in the past that we were not present for. I appreciate the author’s effort to bring these lesser known stories to light.

Holly cow batman, what a book! Aye aye aye. I learned so much within just the first few pages I seriously had to put this one down because it was information overload – but it was in the best possible way. I would read a few pages then set the book down, turn to my husband, and ask him if he knew what I learned. Some things he did, and some things he didn’t which made me feel a little better at least. This book is phenomenal. I felt so many emotions while I was reading it, but the most prevailing was shock. I still can’t wrap my head around how people treated people this way. It is unfathomable and truly horrific. This is one of those books that I feel should be required reading. People need to know this stuff and this book does a good job explaining the events and doesn’t sugarcoat things.

Interesting read. Will be great for the right audience but may not be for everyone but definitely interesting. Thank you for the advanced copy.

This was fantastic.

This author took a subject that is horrendous and presents it to you in a way that you can digest.
Very well researched and extremely well written.

Special thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for the advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!

This book is very well written. Siddharth Kara does a wonderful job of taking a very serious and horrid subject and presenting it in a way that anyone can digest. He does not sugar coat the horrors of the slave trade, but instead gives all the minute details so that we, as people from the "future", can understand the terrors of our collective past and hopefully never go back to that.

Although I have knowledge of the history of the Atlantic Slave Trade, and have read stories about the terrible things done back then, I did not know THIS much about it. I am so thankful to have read this book and for Kara to have written it because he does such an amazing job of factually showing what happened on a specific ship (The Zorg) during this time period, as well as give broad statistics and facts about the ordeal as a whole.

If you are not sickened by this book, you have no heart. Kara pours into this text every issue with what has happened during this time and how it affects us even today. Things you might not even consider being affected today are, and I am glad Kara has spent the time to research and write down a comprehensive text that anyone can pick up and take in without prior knowledge.

This book will stay with me long into my years partly because of how amazing Kara writes, and partly because the subject matter is so horrid. It is something we all should know about in order to prevent this in our future, and although it is not a joyful read, it is a very important one.

If you're a history fan this is a great book! If you want to learn more about humanities lows and learn from them, this is the book for you! Siddharth Kara does this subject matter justice with his book and I cannot thank him enough for deciding to write this piece, it is very powerful! 10/10 !!

This book is well researched and written. It covers the major players and events leading up to the crime of putting many slaves, mostly women and children, to death on the high seas by pushing them overboard to alive shortages caused by overcrowding. The last portion of the book covers the subsequent trial. It is a good read for any who want to better understand the cruelty that was the slave trade.

I received a free Kindle copy of this book courtesy of Net Galley and the publisher with the understanding that I would post a review on Net Galley, Goodreads, Amazon and my nonfiction book review blog.

Well written. Takes a moment to get to the Zorg itself, but what shows before helps to showcase the history and what the mentality was at that time. The author points out many small curiosities, aka well-researched, and gives much Portuguese history in this volume. Did you know that about 300 years before the Amistad there was a revolt on a ship called Mesiricordia? There are also quotes from Lawrence of Arabia's brother and more. Sometimes the book is too academic and the reading becomes dense, but it gives good information. How terrible that people were not treated as humans but seen as a product. Like mining ore, human ore.

Thank you NetGalley for an eArc of this book. The opinions are my own and freely given.

This tells the story of a slave ship in which the passengers are thrown overboard and the insurance lawsuit that followed.

I did not enjoy this. it seemed like it took forever to actually get the slaves on the ship and flew through why they were thrown overboard.

This is not my normal type of book but it was an important topic and one I wanted to know more about. I thought the writing was wonderful, informative and well balanced. It was a difficult topic to read about but the author handled it so well and I was able to learn a lot.

“The Zorg” is a non-fiction history detailing the murder by drowning of some 130 Africans caught up in the triangle slave trade between Europe, Africa, and the Americas. Well-researched and finely written, it examines the profitability and growth of the trade during the 18th Century, the nations and some of the individuals involved, and the violence and privations inflicted upon the enslaved. It also relates the particular story of the ship Zorg and how the actions of its owners and crew resulted in court decisions that bolstered the nascent abolition movement in England and the U.S. and ultimately aided in the abolition of both the English slave trade and slavery.

The book does an excellent job of describing the mechanics of the slave trade: who benefitted, the risks involved, and the rewards that could be reaped. It amply demonstrates how the trade generated a labor force for American and Caribbean colonies and great economic benefits for many nations including England, France, Holland, Spain, and Portugal, as well as for various African tribes and kingdoms.

Author Siddharth Kara pulls no punches when it comes to describing the squalor and horrific mistreatment that slaves were made to endure from the time of capture to the end of the months-sometimes-year-long journey to western slave markets. Prisons, dungeons, slave pens, and the vastly overcrowded, filthy, suffocating ships’ holds—not to mention various instruments of physical torture—are depicted in gruesome detail, as are the events, miscalculations, incompetence, and possible conspiracy to defraud aboard the Zorg that led to the intentional drowning of some 130 slaves.

The final portion of the book recounts the trials of the lawsuits brought by the Zorg's’ owners against their insurers for recovery of the value of the slaves murdered. While the irony of the claim itself is stunning, Kara makes the case that those trials and the conditions they publicized contributed mightily to Parliament’s outlawing the slave trade in 1807 and to its abolition of slavery in 1833.

I can’t say that this was an enjoyable reading experience. The subject matter is just too grim for that. But it was an experience I found to be instructive and worthwhile. In other words, I thought I learned something. Kudos to Siddharth Kara for his decision to take up this task and for his commitment and scholarship in its execution.

My thanks to NetGalley, author Siddharth Kara, and publisher St. Martin’s Press for providing me with a complimentary electronic ARC. All of the foregoing is my honest, independent opinion

People. We are talking about people.

Siddharth Kara's The Zorg is so affecting because he does the opposite of what you expect. He tells the story of the infamous slave ship using an ingenious style — understatement. (Note: Yes I used an em dash. No, I am not AI.) For the vast majority of the book, I found myself consistently reading what seemed like a rather straightforward business explanation only to pull back and remind myself that we are talking about humans. I suspect it is what Kara was going for. The "leaders" (and I mean that in the most insulting way it can be taken) of the Zorg thought of the people jammed into their holds only as cargo to be sold at the next slave port. Kara uses this lens to make it so that the reader can be even more disgusted by what is happening in the pages because the villains (which is a much better descriptor) are so blase about the pain and death of their fellow humans.

I am intentionally obfuscating what happens on the Zorg. I remembered the main points of the story before I started the book, and I truly think it is best to go in without foreknowledge if possible. To be clear though, none of it is good. Along the way, you will meet slaves, one of the worst co-workers of all time, and a stupid doctor. The story of the Zorg would light the match that became the flame of abolition in England, but a price would need to be paid first. Along the way, there are so many coincidences and near misses which would seem beyond belief if they weren't all exquisitely documented.

Kara tells this story economically. It is slim in comparison to what this book could have been. This is an observation, not a criticism. I can easily hand this book to anyone, even non-history nerds, and tell them it is an easy read from a prose perspective. From a subject matter perspective, however....damn. For those who brave the heartbreaking and soul-crushing aspects of the book, you are rewarded at the end with what can be considered a triumphant ending. It is certainly one of my books of the year.

(This book was provided as an advance reader copy by NetGalley and St. Martin's Press.)

As someone in insurance, of all the books out there, of course I would unknowingly pick a book about an insurance claim that set wheels in motion to change the world!

Overall, I thought this book was great in a horrifying type of way. It's a bit hard to follow the history of the slave trading companies and everyone involved at the beginning of the book, but it became easier to follow once the story of the Zorg got underway.

The background wasn't a total waste on me though. It was pretty laughable to read about plantation owners complaining about one of the slave trading companies with a monopoly charging "excessive rates" and how it was "crippl[ing] the plantations in a grievous manner". Cry me a river that you had to pay a high up front cost to purchase a human being to otherwise give you free labor that you would profit tremendously from. A human being that you would also likely get generational free labor from if they have children that you kept on as slaves. No sympathy here.

It was also interesting to hear the origins of the term "log book" literally coming from the use of a log on a ship as a measuring device. I would never have guessed.

Hearing about the things that happened on this ship, and the fact that the story likely would have been lost to history if not for the filing of a disputed insurance claim, is chilling. How many other times did something like this happen that we don't know about? No matter how much I learn about the slave trade, I will certainly never understand it.

Although this ship was particularly horrifying, at least it helped abolitionists use it as an example to bring others to their side and eventually take steps to end the entire practice.

I received a free ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

The Zorg is an incredibly well-researched account of what triggered the abolition of slavery. This author, Siddharth Kara, has put in an astounding amount of effort to create a historical record of what happened on the slave ship Zorg in the latter half of the 1700s that eventually led to the end of slavery in Europe and the Americas. Filling in the blanks of what happened so long ago necessitates speculation where written records have been lost, deliberately destroyed, or never created. Still, Professor Kara makes every effort to discover the truth behind the actions of the perpetrators and their motives and of those who fought to end the utter horror of the slave experience. Kara demonstrates that a few people coming together can initiate a movement that, with faith and persistence, can transform society.

While not normally a history reader, my neighborhood book club had a new member choose a book with scarce copies, “Amazing Grace: William Wilberforce and the Heroic Campaign to End Slavery” by Eric Metaxas. We managed (and also passed around a copy of the DVD). Our discussion included the frustration that it took so long for the abolitionists to convince British society to fully outlaw slavery. In the US, it took even longer and decades after American outlawed slavery, Southern slavers were still secretly smuggling slaves (check out the story and documentary of “The Clotilda”).

“The Zorg” is part of a further discussion, too, since as a Dutch ship, the fact that the crew murdered 137 women and children when supplies dwindled, might have escaped scrutiny if not for the audacity of the ship’s owners to file an insurance claim in England for the loss of the slaves (as if they weren’t responsible for throwing these innocents overboard). This was the incident that finally inflamed the nascent abolitionist moment and had far reaching consequences in both Britain and the US.

It’s a fascinating part of history (that, unfortunately, is still being repressed) and once you read this, it’s likely you’ll want to research more about the abolition movement. 4 stars !

Thank you to St.Martin’s Press and NetGalley for an advanced reader copy!

This book provides an in-depth look at the horrors of the slave trade and the industries that thrived on it. By including these details that are often overlooked in historical accounts, it makes the story of the Zorg even more impactful.

The Zorg is a devastating, meticulously researched exposé that shook me to my core. Siddharth Kara pulls back the curtain on the hidden world of forced labor in cobalt mining, revealing the staggering human cost behind the tech powering our modern lives. This isn’t just a book—it’s a wake-up call.

Kara’s investigative work is fearless. He doesn’t just report from a distance—he embeds himself, listens, documents, and refuses to let the reader look away. The accounts he shares are harrowing, intimate, and enraging. Every page confronts you with the reality that behind our smartphones, electric cars, and clean energy ambitions are human lives being crushed in the name of profit.

What sets The Zorg apart is not only Kara’s journalistic rigor, but his ability to center the voices of those most affected. The storytelling is clear, compelling, and compassionate. He never sensationalizes. Instead, he lays out the facts with precision and humanity, making the stakes impossible to ignore.

This book changed how I think about supply chains, corporate responsibility, and the true cost of convenience. If you care about ethics, justice, or the future of global labor, The Zorg is required reading. It’s powerful, necessary, and deeply uncomfortable—in all the ways it needs to be.

3.75 stars
The title says it all... greed, murder and a history of slavery. I was impressed by the depth of research that went into this book. There were several layers of focus that included the economic competition and wars between some of the European nations that led to and perpetuated slavery, the ins and outs of the slave trade business, the story of The Zorg itself and the events leading to the abolition of slavery in England.

The historical details were impressive and provided an in-depth picture of what was going on at this time in history. I did find the level of detail a bit too much at times, which stalled the narrative. My favorite parts were The Zorg and learning about the slave trading business and the awful conditions the African people were exposed to once captured.

I absolutely recommend to readers who enjoy nonfiction. However, if you're more interested in naval history, just know that the Zorg is only about a third of the story.

Thank you Netgalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I cannot wait to read more from this author. Kara conveyed the horrors of slavery, the middle passage and the events on the Zorg without being unnecessarily graphic - there's no way to write about enslavement with being graphic. This book is a must read for anyone that wants to understand more about Englands involvement in the Atlantic slave trade and the legal battle to end it. Kara's writing is more targeted to readers that have at least a working background on the Atlantic slave trade and not those just starting their exploration of this topic, as there were some areas where the background information was a bit sparse or non-existent. Overall, great book!

This book is an interesting history of the Atlantic slave trade with particular in-depth focus on the infamous British (originally Dutch) slave ship Zorg (a.k.a Zong). The slave trade is a grim subject and the Zorg story particularly painful, but remembering the history is one way to honor its victims.

Of particular interest were the numerous instances in this story where it may never have been exposed to public attention except for a chance action: an observer in the court room writes an anonymous letter to the paper which happened to be noticed and brought to the attention of the correct person.

The two chapters devoted to the appeal hearing were fascinating in that the many eloquent oral arguments had little effect except for the fact about the rain.

Of particular interest in this book is the Epilog in which the author does some detective sleuthing and determines the identity of the person who wrote the anonymous letter. I was impressed with the amount of detail that could be retrieved from happenings so long ago, but the fact that it’s a story involving a combination of financial records and trial transcripts meant that records were recorded and saved.