36. Throwing Living Slaves Overboard
The most infamous and best-documented incident of slavers throwing living Africans overboard occurred on the slave ship Zong, in late November 1781. Starting on November 29th, and for days afterward, the Zong’s captain went on a dark killing spree, during which he had over 130 Africans thrown overboard to drown in the Atlantic. The event came to be known as the Zong Massacre.
The incident is shocking to modern sensibilities, but at the time such events were sufficiently common that the massacre would probably have been forgotten, save for one twist. The event was saved from vanishing into obscurity because, when the ship finally reached port in Jamaica, its owners filed an insurance claim to recover the value of the slaves thrown overboard. It was the subsequent litigation, and the legal precedents set, that preserved the details of the Zong Massacre for posterity.