On November 29th, 1781, the crew of a ship off course in the Caribbean held a desperate

meeting.

Below their feet were hundreds of people crammed into narrow spaces no human being should

have ever had to suffer.

As bad as that was though, when the meeting was concluded, what happened to them next

was far more disturbing.

What the crew decided and what they proceeded to do was so horrific

that it would go into cause sweeping changes on an entire industry.

This is their horrifying story and as always, view discretion is strongly advised. By the end of November, 1781, a ship known as the Zong was already in bad shape.

It had been at sea for months, pushing its way across the Atlantic with far more people on board than it had any business carrying. Strangely, anyone looking at it from the outside would have seen an ordinary merchant vessel.

Inside, though, nothing was running the way it should have been.

The man officially in charge, Captain Luke Collingwood, was barely conscious from illness.

He was actually so sick that the crew could no longer count on him four decisions, leaving the ship drifting from one substitute leader to another.

More importantly though, hundreds of captives were crammed into spaces below deck that were

never meant to hold so many human beings. Disease had already taken hold, and the heat and lack

of ventilation only made things worse. People were getting sick faster than the crew could manage,

and the strain of so

many sick captives added to the panic that was building on board. This would have been a

problem for any ship, but to make things worse, the crew of the Zong wasn't exactly a stable

unit. Their first mate, James Kelsall, had been removed from duty after an argument with the

captain weeks before. Another man, Robert Stubbs, a former

captive ship captain who was only traveling on the Zong as a passenger, had

...