Content area
Full Text
Prologue
The story of the eighteenth-century slave ship Zong is one that continues to haunt the imaginations of artists and writers. Among those who have engaged with the horrific events surrounding the Zong are the English painter William Turner, author and scholar Marina Warner, poet and novelist Fred D'Aguiar, and novelist and essayist Michelle Cliff, not to mention scholars Paul Gilroy and (more recently) Ian Baucom.1 The slave ship Zong, while on a journey across the Atlantic with a "cargo" of slaves, was beset by illness, resulting in the deaths of slaves and some crew members. The captain decided that, in order to save the ship's owners further loss, he would throw overboard some 130 Africans. This, according to insurance law at that time, would ensure that the owners could collect insurance monies for "mitigating" their loss by murdering their slaves, rather than allowing them to die a natural death. Zong! attempts the story that must be told that can't be told-a story that can only be told through its untelling.
OS
The sea was not a mask.
-Wallace Stevens
Zong! # 2
the throw in circumstance
the weight in want
in sustenance
for underwriters
the loss
the order in destroy
the that fact
the it was
the were
negroes
the after rains
Zong! # 3
the some of negroes
over
board
the rest in lives
drowned
exist did not
in themselves
preservation
obliged
frenzy
thirst for forty others
etc
Zong! # 4
this is
not was
or
should be
this be
not
should be
this
should
not
be
is
Zong! # 6
question therefore
the age
eighteen weeks
and calm
but it is said...
-from the maps
and
contradicted
by the evidence?
question
therefore
the age
Zong! # 9
slaves
to the order in
destroyed
the circumstance in
fact
the property in
subject
the subject in
creature
the loss in
underwriter
to the fellow in
negro
the sustenance
in want
the arrived
in vessel
the weight
in provisions
the suffered in
die
the me in
become
Zong!#25
justify the could
the captain &
the crew
the authorize
in captain
crew &
could
could authorize justify
captain
&
crew
the
could
or justify authorize
could
captain & crew
authorize
the crew
the captain &
the...