The Zong Massacre: The Slave Ship Case That Shocked Britain

In 1781, the British slave ship Zong set sail from Africa to Jamaica. When a navigation error led to a water shortage, Captain Luke Collingwood ordered 133 enslaved Africans thrown overboard alive. But this was no act of desperation—it was an insurance fraud. The subsequent 1783 court case, Gregson v. Gilbert, centered not on murder but on whether the lost 'cargo' was covered by maritime insurance. Lord Mansfield's ruling that it was 'as if horses' were thrown overboard sparked outrage. Abolitionist Granville Sharp and former enslaved writer Olaudah Equiano seized on the case, using it to galvanize public opinion. This episode unpacks the details: the massacre, the trial, and how a cold calculation of profit turned into a watershed moment for the abolition movement. We follow the legal arguments, the insurers' refusal to pay, and the shocking testimony that revealed the scale of the atrocity. The Zong case did not end the slave trade, but it stripped away any pretense that the Middle Passage was anything other than a vessel of death—and gave the abolitionists their most powerful weapon yet. #ZongMassacre #SlaveShip #InsuranceFraud #LordMansfield #GranvilleSharp #OlaudahEquiano #GregsonvGilbert #BritishAbolition #MiddlePassage #1781 #CaptainCollingwood #MaritimeInsurance #History #FexingoHistory #SlaveTrade #AbolitionMovement #Jamaica #AfricanDiaspora Keep every episode free: buymeacoffee.com/fexingo