Tag: Abolition

On an Insurance Claim

In the US and in most of Europe, truckers haul much of the freight from one city to another. The goods they haul, however, often originate in an overseas nation, and that requires shipment by freighter. This story is about one such over the ocean transport carrier, a British ship called the Zong. The ship had been built in the 1770s by a Dutch company and was originally called the Zorg, a Dutch word that means “care.” The ship was built to service the Dutch settlements in the Americas, including what is now the nation of Suriname.

In 1781, the ship was bought by a company out of Liverpool, England. Interestingly, the Zong was purchased with its storage holds full of valuable cargo. Since the ship was already carrying a load of goods, the new owners were eager to get the ship insured. Another Liverpool insurance firm wrote the policy, and the owners paid their premium. The Zong wasn’t fully insured, however. Insurance was so expensive for ocean-going vessels that the new owners were able to only protect half of their investment. The other half of the risk was born by the owners themselves. Now, please remember that 250 years ago, travelling across oceans by sail was an incredibly risky venture. Almost 15% of all ships that left port never made it to the final destination during that time. That puts seafaring as a profession up there with astronaut for being high-risk.

The Zong left its port of origin with a crew of 17 and one paying passenger. That crew was made up of some of the old Dutch crew, but the new owners put their own captain and first mate on board as well as some other crew. The rest of the space on the ship was for the cargo. And, in an effort to make up their costs for the ship, the new owners added to the already bulging cargo area. In fact, the Zong was carrying about half again as much cargo as it was designed to hold. Adding to this fact was the issue that the new captain, a man named Luke Collingwood, a person whose actual occupation was a physician. He had little experience as either a captain or as a navigator. And, as the ship sailed for the Caribbean Sea, his lack of navigational skills threw the ship and crew and cargo far, far off course.

After a time, the navigational error was discovered. By that time, water and other supplies were running dangerously low. If the Zong had not had so much cargo, then making up the time lost to the navigational error could be shorter. Besides, the cargo was becoming damaged the longer it stayed in the hold. That meant that, once it reached its destination, the owners would get less for the goods than what they wanted or expected. An executive decision was reached by the captain. If the cargo was “lost at sea,” it could be claimed as an insurance loss and thereby allow the owners to recoup some of their impending losses. The crew was allowed to vote on the proposal, and it passed unanimously. Some of the cargo was to be jettisoned into the Atlantic.

Thus, when the Zong finally reached its destination, less than half of the original cargo was left. The owners filed an insurance claim for their “losses” as reported by Collingwood. However, the insurers balked at paying. They claimed that the jettisoned cargo wasn’t actually “lost at sea” but, rather, was purposefully destroyed. At a trial, the court agreed with the owners, and the insurance company was ordered to pay up. But they disagreed, and the case was appealed.

On appeal, the decision was reversed. The court objected to the reasons for the destruction of the cargo, saying that willful jettisoning without a direct threat to life (the crew wasn’t in devastating danger although their situation was growing worse, for sure), there was no reason to do what they did. The owners had to bear the loss of the destroyed cargo.

In other words, the owners of the Zong were not compensated for the willful murder of 150 African slaves.

On the Capture of a Radical

John Brown led a small insurrection against the United States in 1859 in what is now West Virginia. Brown’s intent was to raid a federal gun depository–the armory at Harper’s Ferry, in what was then Virginia–and arm slaves with guns so that they revolt against their masters. He and his fellow ultra-radical abolitionists thought that the slave population would rise to answer their call of armed insurrection against the evil of what many Americans referred to as The Peculiar Institution. Abolitionists like Brown felt that they were the hands and feet of God’s freedom and were put on earth to end slavery.

So, with a small “army” of about two dozen men, both black and white, Brown truly believed that he and his men would soon be joined by hundreds of armed newly-freed slaves. These slaves would then turn their guns on their masters, punishing the slaveowners for what Brown felt was a terrible sin in the eyes of God. But, after he and his men took the armory, he realize that he had no way to let the enslaved people know about his plan without raising an alarm that would bring state and federal militias against him and his cohorts. So, to make sure the outside world wouldn’t hear of the capture of the armory, Brown ordered the telegraph lines to be cut.

But he forgot about the train. Some of his men shot at a train that pulled through Harper’s Ferry, and the train managed to make its way down the tracks to a station that had a working telegraph. The train crew sent out word about the situation in Harper’s Ferry, and, soon, a detachment of marines were dispatched to recapture the armory and arrest the insurrectionists. Within seven hours, Brown and his men found themselves surrounded by the marines and other various militia groups who had come on their own accord.

The colonel in charge of the marines sent a message under a flag of truce into the armory, telling Brown and his fellow rebels that they would be protected if they surrendered and gave up all their arms. Brown refused the terms. That led the colonel to order a full assault on the armory. Inside the building, a short but bloody skirmish took place that saw the marines quickly regain control. Afterward, Brown lay seriously injured by a saber blow and several of his men, a few marines, and some civilians Brown had taken hostage were either hurt or killed.

Brown’s actions were first seen as being terrible and radical, especially in the south. Pro-slavery proponents pointed out that his actions were the natural result of uninhibited and dangerous abolitionist rhetoric. After the initial shock of the violence, people in the north began to speak of Brown in glowing terms, began to see him as a shining example of liberty and freedom as defined in the American founding documents. Many today see Brown’s attempted rebellion as the first shots of the American Civil War.

After Brown was finally executed by hanging for his insurrection, people began eulogizing him in literature and song. John Brown’s Body became a refrain sung by Union troops as the Civil War began two years later. In part, it said, “John Brown’s body lies a-moldering in the grave, but his truth is marching on.” Julia Ward Howe changed those words to what we now know as the Battle Hymn of the Republic–leaving out references to Brown but keeping the ideas of the ware being a blow for freedom against slavery.

Oh, and remember that colonel who led the marines in the recapture of the armory at Harper’s Ferry? The one who penned the surrender terms to Brown?

He was offered the command of the Union Army by President Lincoln as the Civil War began.

But, as we know, Robert E. Lee turned down that offer.