Liverpool-born Julie McNamara has lived with these uneasy facts for as long as she can remember.

She explains: “My father’s was one of many Irish Catholic families settled around the river Mersey and destined to become ship builders. Camell Laird’s ate up 35 years of his working life. He belonged to the sea and was only ever happy on water. When he dredged up an old life boat from the bed of the Mersey, the neighbours mocked. Two years he laboured with his hands, working every spare hour until he had finished a beautifully crafted fishing boat.

The Dajam was launched and he disappeared. He would be gone for weeks at a time, returning to scoop me up at the bottom of the jetty near the Admiral pub at Rock Ferry.  Everything I know about boats, I learned at my father’s side, how and where to fish, to manage the boat, to row or to skull with a single oar. I was the son he had always wanted and I was destined to walk on water. He taught me to drive on a disused road near Morpeth dock at the age of 15. I had to weave between the anchor chains and three bollards preventing us falling into the river, ramp it up to fourth gear and screech to an emergency stop before hitting the brick wall ahead. Then do the whole thing, over and over in reverse gear. I am an expert driver.

But when my father died his boat went to a male relative. I was furious. The Dajam should have been mine. Some years later I went in search of my father’s boat knowing it was somewhere out there on the Mersey. Every name change of a ship or boat has to be registered with the maritime office on Albert dock, so I headed for their archives. Three hours later, defeated and utterly bored with the pages and pages of entries, I went for a breather in the International Museum of Slavery on the floor beneath. What I witnessed there took my breath away and sent me on an entirely new course of action. I gave up on the Dajam in search of the Zong.”

The character Nzingah was the voice of our conscience, drawn from the story of an enslaved African woman who had witnessed the cold-blooded murder of 132 people thrown overboard for a fraudulent insurance claim based on ‘losses at sea’ from the Zong – known as Liverpool’s Ship of Shame. Julie Mc had found the details of the ship’s story in the International Museum of Slavery. 133 people were thrown overboard to lighten the load and save food supplies when the ship was floundering, 60 days off course. It is recorded that one person survived, having clawed their way back on board. They hid among the food supplies until the Zong reached dry land – and lived to tell the tale. Julie Mc used poetic license to reimagine the story and decided that person must surely have been a woman.