Granville Sharp campaigns to raise awareness of…
July 1783 CE
Neither Portland nor the Admiralty send him a reply.
Only a single London newspaper had reported the first Zong trial in March 1783, but it had provided details of events.
The newspaper article in March 1783 was the first public report of the massacre, and it was published nearly eighteen months after the event.
Little else about the massacre will appear in print before 1787.
Despite these setbacks, Sharp's efforts do have some success.
In April 1783, he had sent an account of the massacre to William Dillwyn, a Quaker, who had asked to see evidence that was critical of the slave trade.
The London Yearly Meeting of the Society of Friends had decided shortly after to begin campaigning against slavery, and a petition signed by two hundred and seventy-three Quakers is submitted to parliament in July 1783.
Sharp also sends letters to Anglican bishops and clergy and to those already sympathetic to the abolitionist cause.