A slave ship's crew murdered captives for the insurance money

In 1781, running short on water after navigation errors, the crew of the slave ship Zong threw more than 130 enslaved Africans overboard alive -- then filed an insurance claim for them as lost cargo. The insurers refused to pay, and the resulting court case exposed the massacre publicly, becoming a rallying point for Britain's early abolitionist movement.

— James Walvin, The Zong: A Massacre, the Law and the End of Slavery — Yale University Press, 2011
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