James Stout

Is Equiano sending this letter to Granville Sharp?

So Sharp hits the ground running.

He starts meeting with the lawyers who represented the insurers in that case and is like, hey, I think we can file an action against the Gregson syndicate and request a new trial.

And I think we can win that new trial because we didn't really have a full trial last time.

If we really make a thing of this, we can make them go through discovery and we can look at the log books and the other documentation kept by the crew of the Zorg, right?

And we can see, did they really need to kill those people?

You know?

Yeah.

He also starts barraging influential figures in the country with letters demanding the Admiralty Court charge the crewmen of the Zorg with murder.

He's going to do this the rest of his life.

It never works, but he does keep trying, right?

Most of his efforts don't bear fruit, but he succeeds in getting a hearing over a motion to set a new trial.

And this hearing is scheduled for May 21st, 1783, less than two months after the first trial.

Gregson v. Gilbert, which is the hearing, is not going to be a tiny, largely ignored case.

It's going to be a major court thing with exacting notes taken on court proceedings and a huge amount of media attention covering every twist and turn.

Sharp is not technically the lawyer here, but he's basically acting as an advisor to the defense counsel, which consisted of three lawyers.

Right.

Um, the most important of these was a fellow named Samuel Haywood and Haywood's a really interesting person.

He was born in Liverpool in the 1750s.

He went to Cambridge.