January 12, 1721 - William Gregson
Among the most prolific figures in the transatlantic slave trade, Gregson operated at a scale that makes his name significant in any accounting of the system's human cost. His career also intersected with one of the trade's most legally consequential episodes — the Zong massacre, in which enslaved Africans were thrown overboard and insurers were pursued for compensation, a case that drew public attention to the trade's brutal commercial logic. The numbers attached to his operations — tens of thousands transported, thousands dead in passage — represent one of the more thoroughly documented individual footprints in that history.
From Wikipedia
William Gregson (12 January 1721 – 1800) was an English slave trader and politician. He was responsible for at least 152 slave voyages, and his slave ships are recorded as having carried 58,201 Africans, of whom 9,148 died. Gregson was the co-owner of a ship called the Zong, whose crew perpetrated the Zong massacre.
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