ship after being thrown into the water. The crew claimed that the Africans had been jettisoned because the ship did not have enough water to keep them all alive for the rest of the voyage. This claim was later disputed, as the ship had of water left when it finally arrived in Jamaica on 22 December. An affidavit later made by Kelsall stated that on 1 December, when 42 enslaved people were killed, it rained heavily for more than a day, allowing six casks of water (sufficient for 11 days) to be collected. Arrival at Jamaica On 22 December 1781, Zong arrived at Black River, Jamaica, with 208 slaves on board, less than half the number taken from Africa. The survivors were sold into slavery in January 1782. These people were sold for an average price of £36 per person. The Jamaican Vice-Admiralty court upheld the legality of the British capture of Zong from the Dutch and the syndicate renamed the ship Richard of Jamaica. Luke Collingwood died three days after Zong reached Jamaica, two years before the 1783 court proceedings about the case. Legal proceedings When news of the Zong massacre reached Great Britain, the ship's owners claimed compensation from their insurers for the loss of the slaves. The insurers refused to honour the claim and the owners took them to court. Zongs logbook went missing after the ship reached Jamaica, two years before the hearings started. As such, the legal proceedings provide almost all the documentary evidence about the massacre, though there is no formal record of the first trial other than what is referred to in the subsequent appeals hearing. The ship's insurers claimed that the log had been deliberately destroyed, which the Gregson syndicate denied. Almost all the surviving source material is of questionable reliability. The two witnesses who gave evidence, Robert Stubbs and James Kelsall, were strongly motivated to exonerate themselves from blame. It is possible that the figures concerning the number of people killed, the amount of water that remained on the ship and the distance beyond Jamaica that Zong had mistakenly sailed are inaccurate. First trial Legal proceedings began when the insurers refused to compensate the owners of Zong. The dispute was initially tried at the Guildhall in London on 6 March 1783, with the Lord Chief Justice, the Earl of Mansfield, overseeing the trial before a jury. Mansfield was previously the judge