In the year 1783, we find Mr. Sharp coming again into notice. We find
him at this time taking a part in a cause, the knowledge of which, in
proportion as it was disseminated, produced an earnest desire among all
disinterested persons for the abolition of the Slave Trade.

In this year, certain underwriters desired to be heard against Gregson
and others of Liverpool, in the case of the ship Zong, Captain
Collingwood, alleging that the captain and officers of the said vessel
threw overboard one hundred and thirty-two slaves alive into the seas in
order to defraud them, by claiming the value of the said slaves, as if
they had been lost in a natural way. In the course of the trial which
afterwards came on, it appeared, that the slaves on board the Zong were
very sickly; that sixty of them had already died; and several were ill
and likely to die, when the captain proposed to James Kelsall, the mate,
and others, to throw several of them overboard, stating, "that if they
died a natural death, the loss would fall upon the owners of the ship;
but that if they were thrown into the sea, it would fall upon the
underwriters." He selected, accordingly, one hundred and thirty-two of
the most sickly of the slaves. Fifty-four of these were immediately
thrown overboard, and forty-two were made to be partakers of their fate
on the succeeding day. In the course of three days afterwards the
remaining twenty-six were brought upon deck to complete the number of
victims. The first sixteen submitted to be thrown into the sea; but the
rest, with a noble resolution, would not suffer the officers to touch
them, but leaped after their companions and shared their fate.

The plea which was set up in behalf of this atrocious and unparalleled
act of wickedness was, that the captain discovered, when he made the
proposal, that he had only two hundred gallons of water on board, and