Zong Massacre, Robert Smalls, and Claudette Colvin

The Zong Massacre (1781) was one of the most horrific atrocities of the transatlantic slave trade. Aboard the British slave ship Zong, over 130 enslaved Africans were deliberately thrown overboard into the Atlantic Ocean so the ship’s owners could claim insurance money for "lost cargo." The crew justified the killings by arguing that there wasn’t enough water to sustain all those on board—a claim later disproven.When the case reached court, the issue wasn’t murder—it was insurance fraud. The enslaved people were treated as property, and the court debated financial compensation rather than accountability for mass murder. The case sparked outrage among abolitionists like Olaudah Equiano and Granville Sharp, helping to galvanize the anti-slavery movement in Britain.The Zong Massacre remains a chilling reminder of how human lives were commodified under slavery—and how injustice can be embedded in law.