The slave trade brought vast wealth to British ports and merchants but conditions were horrific. Enslaved people were moved on the ‘Middle Passage’ of the triangular trade route. Many did not survive.
The table below shows the figures for slave trade through the main British ports in 1771.
| Port | Number of ships | Enslaved people |
|---|---|---|
| Liverpool | 107 | 29,250 |
| London | 58 | 8,136 |
| Bristol | 23 | 8,810 |
| Lancaster | 4 | 950 |
Glasgow also carried half of Europe’s tobacco trade at this time, an industry which depended upon slave labour to grow the tobacco in Britain’s colonies in the Americas.
The slave trade brought a great deal of wealth to the British ports that were involved.
Many other cities also grew rich on the profits of industries which depended on materials such as cotton, sugar and tobacco that were produced using labour from enslaved people.
Ports such as Bristol, Liverpool and London sent out many slave ships each year, bringing great prosperity to their owners.
1792 was the busiest slave-trading year for Britain, when 204 ships left Britain to carry enslaved people from Africa to the Americas - this amounted on average, to four ships a week.