Heed lessons of 1781 Zong Massacre, Political Ombudsman urges

Donna Parchment Brown, Jamaica’s Political Ombudsman, is imploring the country to heed well the lessons of history, such as the issues arising from the Zong Massacre of 1781 and the developments that followed.

Delivering the main lecture at Thursday's forum at the Institute of Jamaica to mark the 235^th anniversary of the event, Mrs. Parchment Brown said, as inhuman and outrageous as the massacre of 133 sick Africans en route to Jamaica was, it set in motion many of the changes that were to follow.

“In 1781, the Zong was on its inexorable date with destiny – a date with Black River – and a date with the abolition of slavery, just over 50 years later. The Zong was indeed a poison-tipped dagger in the heart of the enslavement of Africans; what we would call slow poison,” she declared.

She used the example of that tragic event to illustrate that change in the society is not always straightforward, tracing the many other catalytic events that have given rise to progress in the building of the Jamaican nation, including the creation of her own office, out of the country’s tribal political past.

In the Zong incident, 133 sick Africans being brought as slaves to Jamaica on a ship were thrown overboard so that the merchant could claim insurance on their loss as cargo.

The records show that the ship set out from Accra, Ghana (West Africa) to Jamaica with a total of 442 enslaved Africans. By the time the ship had docked in Black River in the southern parish of St. Elizabeth, 133 of the captured Africans had been thrown overboard to ward off illness and to prevent a perceived threat of low water rations.

Claim

The ship’s owners, led by James Gregson, sought to file an insurance claim for loss of cargo against the insurance underwriter, Thomas Gilbert, and the Jamaican court found in his favour in 1872, despite the fact that it was shown that, contrary to the owners’ claim, there had been sufficient water to sustain both the crew and the Africans.

The insurers appealed the case in Britain in 1873 and won, the court ruling that the “cargo” had been poorly managed, as the captain should have made a suitable allowance of water for each slave.

The abolitionists, Granville Sharpe and Olaudah Equiano (a black man) attempted to bring criminal charges against the captain and crew of the Zong, but failed in that bid, with Justice John Lee, Britain’s solicitor-general at the time, asking: “What is this claim that human people have been thrown overboard? This is a case of chattels or goods. Blacks are goods and property; it is madness to accuse these well-serving honourable men of murder ... The case is the same as if wood had been thrown overboard.”

"Honourable men"

Despite the failure to have the criminal charges brought against these “honourable men”, however, the abolitionists were able to raise significant public awareness of the atrocities of the slave trade, which led to its eventual abolition, followed in the 1830s by the abolition of slavery itself.

Example

That history of struggle against injustice in the 18^th century remains a shining example for Jamaicans in the 21^st century, according to Parchment Brown.

“Sometimes we don’t understand when something happens; bad things may happen, that’s not what matters; what matters is what we do with it” she stressed.

In 2007, the Jamaican Government built a monument in Black River to mark the atrocities of the Zong Massacre.