Granville Sharp's Uncovered Letter and the Zong Massacre

Michelle Faubert

• Publisher: Palgrave Pivot
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9783319927855
• eBook ISBN: 9783319927862
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: African History
• Index: History

This book delineates the discovery of a previously unknown manuscript of a letter from Granville Sharp, the first British abolitionist, to the "Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty." In the letter, Sharp demands that the Admiralty bring murder charges against the crew of the Zong for forcing 132 enslaved Africans overboard to their deaths. Uncovered by Michelle Faubert at the British Library in 2015, the letter is reproduced here, accompanied by her examination of its provenance and significance for the history of slavery and abolition. As Faubert argues, the British Library manuscript is the only fair copy of Sharp's letter, and extraordinary evidence of Sharp's role in the abolition of slavery.

© The Author(s) 2018

Michelle FaubertGranville Sharp's Uncovered Letter and the Zong Massacrehttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92786-2_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction

Michelle Faubert¹

(1)

University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, MB, Canada

Michelle Faubert

Email: [email protected]

Abstract

The introduction details the circumstances of my discovery of Granville Sharp’s letter in the British Library, provides evidence that the British Library did not know of its presence there, and establishes the importance of both the Zong massacre and Sharp’s letter for the history of slavery and abolition. It then provides an overview of the monograph.

Keywords

ManuscriptFair copyZong massacreGranville SharpArchival discoverySlavery and abolition

End Abstract

1 The Discovery of Granville Sharp’s Letter to the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty on the Zong in the British Library: A Hidden Treasure Found

… the Necessity of putting an entire stop to the Slave Trade , lest any similar Deeds of Barbarity, occasioned by it, should speedily involve the whole Nation in some such tremendous Calamity as may unquestionably mark the avenging hand of God, who has promised “to destroy the Destroyers of the Earth”!

Granville Sharp

Old Jewry

2.^d July 1783.¹

The above passage on the last page of manuscript I held at the British Library (hereafter the “BL”) in May of 2015 attested to the special nature of the handwritten document that I had inadvertently borrowed. Oddly, though, it was in a volume surrounded by printed eighteenth-century pamphlets of much less historical value. “Granville Sharp ” was the famous name that appeared on the document. I recognized it as belonging to the great, early British hero of abolition . And here, apparently, was his letter from 1783 about “putting an entire stop to the Slave Trade .” Sharp’s intensity fairly jumped off the page through the frequent underlining and exclamation marks in the manuscript, which presented the author in his most enraged, impassioned mood. But to whom had Sharp written, and on what occasion? I reasoned that the first page of the handwritten document would tell me. Flipping quickly through the preceding pages—fifteen in all—I read the words at the top of the first page of the manuscript. They confirmed its historic significance:

Old Jewry London—2.^d July 1783

My Lords

As the cognizance and right of enquiry concerning all Murders committed on board British Ships belongs properly to the Admiralty Department, I think it my Duty to lay before your Lordships two Manuscript Accounts wherein are stated from unquestionable authority the circumstances of a most inhuman and barbarous murder committed by Luke Collingwood the Master, Colonel James Kelsall , the Mate, and other persons, the Mariners or Crew of the Ship Zong or Zurg a Liverpool Trader freighted with Slaves &c. from the Coast of Africa; which Master, Mate, and Crew, on pretence of necessity lest there should be a want of water, wilfully and deliberately destroyed … [132] poor Negro Slaves , by casting them alive (as it is deposed) into the Sea with their hands bound or fetter’d, to deprive them of all possibility of escaping!²

The missive concerns the case of the infamous Zong slave ship , from which 132 enslaved Africans were thrown or forced overboard to their deaths, an incident that has become emblematic of the horrors of the slave trade . Sharp (1735–1813) wrote the letter to request that the Admiralty prosecute the crew of the Zong for the murders. As the BL catalogue contained no record of this document, I suspected immediately what I would soon determine to be the truth: the Library was not aware that it owned this precious manuscript. In what follows, I will establish several significant conclusions about the BL document: that it is the only known fair copy of Sharp’s letter to the Admiralty ; that it passed through several hands before ending up at the BL; that the only other extant copy (at the National Maritime Museum , or NMM ) is a working draft that should be treated as ancillary to the BL letter; and, most importantly, that Sharp meant to publish it. I also include images and a transcription of the BL document (Sharp’s two-part missive to the Admiralty) as an appendix to this volume. My investigation into the provenance of Sharp’s letter in the BL has led to several other discoveries of great importance to the history of abolition , too, such as who was included in Sharp’s group of correspondents regarding the Zong case , and that Sharp’s interest in publishing on slavery did not end in 1777, as scholars have hitherto assumed.

Sharp’s missive to the Admiralty on the Zong massacre is crucially important. The Zong case has been recognized as an incitement for the nascent British abolition movement , while F. O. Shyllon describes Sharp as “England’s first abolitionist.”³ The discovery of this manuscript in the BL provides critical information about Sharp’s contributions to the abolition of slavery . Most histories present Sharp’s anti-slavery activities as rather tame and limited; these include his practical engagement in the legal cases of Jonathan Strong , Thomas Lewis , and James Somerset (sometimes spelled Somersett or Sommersett), formerly enslaved men pursuing their freedom in England; his membership in the Society for the Abolition of the African Slave Trade , founded in 1787, and his contributions to the African Institution , founded in 1807; his presence at the Zong hearing in May and private correspondence with influential Britons regarding the case; and his involvement in the establishment of Sierra Leone , a colony for formerly enslaved people that Sharp created with Thomas Clarkson , William Wilberforce , and others.⁴ The BL document adds a radical element to Sharp’s image, as it provides a glimpse of his dissidence and willingness to use anti-establishment tactics to advance the abolitionist cause. The manuscript in the BL reveals Sharp’s intention to publish his correspondence with the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty about the Zong case and thereby announce to all Britons that the mass murder of enslaved Africans was officially sanctioned and even rewarded.⁵ Sharp’s letter to the Admiralty at the BL at once embodies the silence surrounding slavery in the period and reframes the story of Sharp’s abolitionist efforts. It “reset[s] the boundaries for the study of British abolition .”⁶

The singularity of the fifteen-page BL document—consisting of a letter and detailed account of the events on the Zong —first attracted my attention to it. It is a beautifully handwritten manuscript in a volume containing around twenty printed pamphlets from the eighteenth century; these publications are mostly on medical matters, such as inoculation and contagious disease, which was the focus of my research when I borrowed the volume in the Rare Books & Music Reading Room at the BL . Knowing the rules of the Library well after over fifteen years working there as a scholar specializing in British Romantic-era literature, I was aware that manuscripts—especially old ones by famous people, such as the one I had inadvertently borrowed—were lent out under much stricter conditions than were even the rare books that I had so often consulted. And, yet, I was viewing Sharp’s handwritten missive under non-manuscript conditions. The BL, I suspected immediately, did not know that it owned this treasure, and the Library later confirmed this conjecture to be accurate.⁷ I had discovered a previously unknown, handwritten copy of Sharp’s missive to the “Right Honorable Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty ,” as he specifies at the bottom of the three-page cover letter. To this letter Sharp adds another twelve pages, containing, as his own description announces, “An Account of the Murder of 132 Negro Slaves on board the Ship Zong, or Zurg , with some Remarks on the Argument of an eminent Lawyer in Defence of that inhuman Transaction.”⁸ Together, these documents form one of the first detailed accounts of the infamous Zong case .

2 Overview

How rare, how valuable, was the manuscript by S...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Equiano, Sharp, Mansfield, and the Zong Massacre: History and Significance
• 3. The Provenance of the British Library Document
• 4. The British Library Document: The Definitive Version of Sharp’s Letter on the Zong to the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty
• 5. The Historical Significance of the British Library Document
• 6. Conclusion: Revisiting the History of Abolition
• Correction to: Equiano, Sharp, Mansfield, and the Zong Massacre: History and Significance
• Back Matter