Turner’s Paintings and the Zong Massacre
JMW Turner’s The Slave Ship, or as it was first titled, Slavers throwing overboard the Dead and the Dying – Typhoon coming on was first exhibited at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition in 1840. As Winsome mentioned it is now in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Although by this time slavery had been outlawed in the British Empire, illegal trade was still going on and abolitionists also continued to campaign for it to be outlawed in the rest of the world. No doubt Turner intended to help raise awareness of this cause, as he created his painting to coincide with a conference of the British Anti-Slavery Society at which Prince Albert was scheduled to speak.

As Winsome noted in her preface to Rockets and Blue Lights, and we discussed during our conversation, the painting may have been based on the events of the Zong Massacre which were well known as a result of the prominent court case of 1783 which highlighted the iniquity of the insurance laws that classified enslaved people as no more than “cargo” on a ship. The facts and testimony of the case are shocking to read. The law of the time held that if enslaved people died a “natural death” at sea or onshore, then no compensation could be claimed. However a ship’s captain would be within the law to jettison part of his “cargo” in order to save the rest, and could claim insurance for its value. The “value” of an enslaved person was set at £30 per person! On this basis in the first trial the jury “had no doubt …that the Case of Slaves was the same as if horses had been thrown overboard…The question was whether there was not an Absolute Necessity for throwing them over board to save the rest?”  The crew had claimed that it had been necessary because there had not been enough fresh water to keep all of the people alive for the remainder of the voyage, but on appeal in the second trial new evidence was revealed that heavy rain had fallen on the second day of the killings and more people were thrown overboard even thereafter. Technically therefore Absolute Necessity could not be proved and the insurers were not required to pay up. The verdict never addressed the fact that innocent people were murdered.

The painting that gives Winsome’s play its title was also painted in 1840. Its full title is Rockets and Blue Lights (Close at Hand) to Warn Steamboats of Shoal, and it is now in the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts. It depicts a storm in an English harbour town, with flares exploding in the sky to alert ships to the location of shallow water. On the shore spectators look out to sea, perhaps waiting to know if their loved ones will return safely home, much as Lucy and Jess wait for news of Thomas in the play. In the play rockets and blue lights refer to the Navy sending warnings to a slave ship as they approach, acting as a police force to enforce the anti-slavery laws on the sea. Winsome refers to the contrast in colours between the two paintings: the blood red of the sunset in The Slave Ship and the bright blue in Rockets and Blue Lights. Is the blue the colour of hope, as it might have signalled saviour to those illegally enslaved on a ship caught by the Navy?