|  | | Ken Livingstone launches the exhibition from the bowls of the slave ship Zong Pic: LJ Holloway | Pastor Nims Obunge, a leading black church figure, called on Britain's leaders to enter the bowels of the Zong slave ship, which was launched today by London Mayor Ken Livingstone. In the same week the Prime Minister and Monarch were jolted out of their complacency by protestor Toyin Agbetu at Westminster Abbey, a more gritty commemoration opened on the river near the Tower of London. The Zong slave ship has been recreated in memory of 133 slaves that were tossed overboard after Captain Luke Collingwood in 1781 after he calculated he would earn more money from insurance claims for lost 'cargo' than he would by sailing the captured Africans to the New World. Pastor Obunge, head of the Peace Alliance, said: 'This surpasses the [Westminster] service for me. I would recommend that the Prime Minister and the Queen come onto this ship. It's great that they did Westminster Abbey, but it really needs to be felt.' grace The slavery exhibition, set in the cramped hold of a ship, features graphic illustrations of the brutality of the Middle Passage. Layers of shelves showed how transported slaves were packed next to each other like cattle. Drawings recreate the violence meted out to Africans.  | | The recreated Zong slave ship, moored at Tower Pier near the tower of London. | The exhibition opened with a prayer, as pastors from Glory House Ministries and other churches said the only way to deal with anger and forgive the slave traders was through the grace of the Almighty. Pastor Obunge told Blink: 'No apology, no money, can heel the hurt and pain that African and Caribbean communities feel. 'It's a heeling of the heart and of the soul, and that can't come from money or an apology. That can only come from God.' The Zong, like many slave ships, was a compact vessel. 442 captured Africans were crammed into its' holds. The overloaded ship did not have enough supplies and midway across the Atlantic 133 slaves were tossed overboard. The captain later won insurance compensation of £30 per dead slave. Livingstone told Blink: 'You need to read the human accounts to understand the horrors. No twenty minute lesson is going to convey this horror, and I hope as many people as possible will come and see this exhibition. The lesson out of this is how easily we can ignore other people's humanity.' He added: 'There is hardly a financial institution in this city that didn't in some way have some origin to the slave trade, and you can repeat that story up and down the length of this country. The great cotton industry - based on the labour of slaves. 'The legacy of slavery is still with us today in the trade system in the way we rig the trade system, and that needs to be dealt with.'
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