Granville Sharp’s manuscript letter to the admiralty on the Zong massacre: a new discovery in the British Library

Abstract

ABSTRACTDuring research at the British Library (BL) in May 2015, I discovered a previously unknown manuscript letter from 1783 by Granville Sharp to the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty. The document concerns the case of the infamous Zong slave ship: Sharp wrote the letter to demand that the Admiralty bring murder charges against the crew of the Zong. This article argues that the BL letter is the only known fair-copy of Sharp’s letter to the Admiralty, that the only other extant copy at the National Maritime Museum is a rough draft that should be considered as secondary to the BL letter, and that Sharp intended to publish the letter to the Admiralty.