Slave owner insurance - 200 years on

Descendants of black American slaves are suing London's oldest insurance firm, Lloyd's of London, for compensation for allegedly underwriting the ships used in the slave trade. The case will throw a strange light on one of the atrocities of modern times.

Insurance could be such a difficult issue for the owners of slave ships.

Take the case of the Zong, a British vessel out of Liverpool that transported a human cargo from Africa in 1781.

Food and water were running low; some of the slaves were dying.

So, what to do? Under the terms of the insurance, a death by natural causes would not receive payment, but a death by drowning would.

The answer was clear to Captain Luke Collingwood: throw more than 130 slaves overboard to claim the insurance.

In the event, the matter was contested when it came to court.

The Lord Chief Justice, Lord Mansfield, was clearly uneasy even as he understood the dilemma: "The case of the slaves was the same as if horses had been thrown overboard.''