Trivia

The Zong massacre case, known officially as Gregson v. Gilbert (1783), was not the landmark, pro-abolition decision this movie portrayed it to be. It avoided the issue of slavery altogether, and never actually reached a final decision. Lord Chief Justice William Murray, 1st Earl of Mansfield, called for another trial which never came to court. It is assumed that the matter was settled privately. Lord Mansfield presided over an earlier case that became very important to the abolitionist movement. In Somerset v. Stewart (1772), Lord Mansfield concluded that slavery could only be legal through statute, and since such statute did not exist, there was no legal basis for slavery in England and Wales. This movie steals a line from Somerset v. Stewart and uses it in Gregson v. Gilbert to use the wider implications of Somerset v. Stewart for dramatic effect. In the film, Lord Mansfield's judgment shows that there was enough evidence to suggest that the slavers committed fraud, and that Lord Mansfield personally disliked the idea of slavery. He says nothing about the legality of slavery in England and Wales, nor the legality of insuring humans as cargo. See more