The Zong massacre was the killing of approximately 142 enslaved Africans by the crew of the slave ship Zong in the days following 29 November 1781. The Zong was owned by a Liverpool slave-trading syndicate that had taken out insurance on the lives of the slaves. When the ship ran low on water following navigational mistakes, the crew drowned some of the slaves in the sea. The owners of the Zong made a claim to their insurers for the loss of the slaves. When the insurers refused to pay, the resulting court cases held that in some circumstances the deliberate killing of slaves was legal, and that insurers could be required to pay for the slaves' deaths. The hearings brought the massacre to the attention of the anti-slavery campaigner Granville Sharp, who tried unsuccessfully to have the ship's crew prosecuted for murder. Reports of the massacre stimulated the nascent abolitionist movement and became a powerful symbol of the horrors of the Middle Passage of slaves to the New World. The massacre has also inspired several works of art and literature, including The Slave Ship by J. M. W. Turner (pictured). (Full article...)

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