The lost dock of Liverpool
A Time Team Special
First screened 21 April 2008

Liverpool and the slave trade

A shameful heritage
There was nothing new about slavery when Liverpool first became involved in that terrible trade. The Egyptian, Roman and many other ancient civilisations – including that of Athens, the 'birthplace of democracy' – were built on it. The Arabs and others developed extensive slaving networks as a result of their conquests and trading links during the Islamic era. And slavery was endemic to large parts of Asia, as well as Africa and the Americas, long before the European powers became involved in the transatlantic slave trade from the 17th century onwards.

But the scale of the transatlantic trade during the 17th to 19th centuries, the suffering that it engendered and its continuing defence and justification by people who had no moral excuse that they didn't know better meant that it left an indelible stain on the history of Western civilisation – and no city bears a greater mark of that shameful heritage than Liverpool.

Liverpool's responsibility
It has been calculated that between 1700, when the Blessing and the Liverpool Merchant began the first recorded slave trading voyages by Liverpool ships, some 5,300 slaving voyages were made from the city's port. This compared with 3,100 voyages from London and 2,200 from Bristol. Since the three ports between them accounted for more than 90% of all slaving voyages from British ports, it means that Liverpool alone was responsible for almost half of the slave trade from these shores.

Indeed, Liverpool's dominance of the trade was to become so complete that during the two decades prior to abolition by the British government in 1807 it is estimated that the city was responsible for three quarters of the European slave trade. And even after Kitty's Amelia became the last legal slave ship to depart from Liverpool under Captain Hugh Crow in July 1807, the city's traders continued to operate, sometimes illegally, sometimes sailing under a foreign flag of convenience.

The profits from slavery
Nor did the city only profit from the trade in slaves. Many of Liverpool's richest men were slave owners, who profited from huge plantations in the West Indies. Richard Pennant, the future Lord Penrhyn, who was MP for Liverpool 1767-80 and 1784-90, for example, owned the largest estate in Jamaica. And John Gladstone, the father of the future prime minister William Ewart Gladstone, owned large estates in Jamaica and British Guyana and helped secure compensation for slave owners after abolition (he received £93,526).

As Anthony Tibbles put it in a conference paper at the TextPorts Conference, Liverpool Hope University College, in April 2000: 'The wealth deriving from the slave trade was reflected not only in the buildings and general economic climate but in the fortunes of the individual participants. In Liverpool, we know that every major merchant, and thus every major citizen, was involved to a greater or less extent in the slave trade and its benefits. It is often quoted that all the mayors of the town from the mid-eighteenth century until 1807 (and it includes the other civic officials) had slaving links. But some were more involved that others. William Davenport was involved in 140 voyages. John Tarleton, mayor in 1764, saw his fortune increase from £6000 in 1748 to £80,000 by 1773. Thomas Leyland, three times Mayor, left nearly £750,000 in 1827 and was involved in a range of activities, including founding a bank.'

Cemented in blood
There is hardly a street in Liverpool that doesn't bear some mark of the slave trade. Even Penny Lane, immortalised in song by the city's most famous sons, the Beatles, is named after James Penny, a wealthy slave trader and fierce opponent of abolition. Not for nothing was the actor George Frederick Cooke (1756-1812) able to respond to being hissed, when he came on stage drunk during a visit to Liverpool: 'I have not come here to be insulted by a set of wretches, every brick in whose infernal town is cemented with an African's blood.'

Petitioning against abolition
There were at least 37 slave trading mayors of Liverpool from 1700 to 1807, and a leading slave trader, George Case, chaired the city's finance committee for 38 years from 1775. Perhaps it's not surprising, then, that the city's leading figures fought so long and hard against the abolition of the slave trade. The Liverpool Corporation sent 64 petitions opposing abolition to parliament during the debates of 1787-1807, and even paid for a delegation to remain in London throughout this period to argue its case.

One such petition against abolition was presented to parliament in 1788:

Petition of Liverpool to the House of Commons, 14 February 1788

To the honourable the House of Commons, the humble petition of the Mayor showeth that the trade of Liverpool having met with the countenance of this honourable House in many Acts of Parliament, which have been granted at different times during the present century, for the constructing of proper and convenient wet docks for shipping, and more especially for the African ships, which from their form require to be constantly afloat, your Petitioners have been emboldened to lay out considerable sums of money and to pledge their Corporates seal for other sums to a very large amount for effectuating these goods and laudable purposes.

That your petitioners have also been happy to see the great increase and different resources of trade which has flowed in upon their town by the numerous canals and other communications from the interior parts of this kingdom, in which many individuals, as well as public bodies of proprietors are materially interested. And that from these causes, particularly the convenience of the docks, and some other local advantages, added to the enterprising spirit of the people, which has enabled them to carry on the African Slave Trade with vigour, the town of Liverpool has arrived at a pitch of mercantile consequence which cannot but affect and improve the wealth and prosperity of the kingdom at large.

Your Petitioners therefore contemplate with real concern the attempts now making by the petitions lately preferred to your honourable House to obtain a total abolition of the African Slave Trade, which has hitherto received the sanction of Parliament, and for a long series of years has constituted and still continues to form a very extensive branch of the commerce of Liverpool, and in effect gives strength and energy to the whole; but confiding in the wisdom and justice of the British Senate, your Petitioners humbly pray to be heard by their counsel against the abolition of this source of wealth before the Honourable House shall proceed to determine upon a point which so essentially concerns the welfare of the town and port of Liverpool in Particular, and the landed interest of the kingdom in general and which in their judgement must also tend to the prejudice of the British manufacturers, must ruin the property of the English merchants in the West Indies, diminish the public revenue and impair the maritime strength of Great Britain.

Petitioners: Thomas Earle Esquire, Mayor John Sparling, William Gregson, John Blackburne, Thomas Golightly, Peter Rigby, Richard Gerard, George Case, James Clemens, John Gregson, John Crosbie, James Gildart Junior, William Kerketh, Thomas Staniforth, Clayton Tarleton, John Hughes, Robert Moss, Edmund Rigby, Johne Blackburne Junior, Thomas Crowder Clemens, Harry Hardwar, Peter Baker, John Greenwood, Thomas Smyth, Richard Stratham, Spencer Steers, John Colquitt.

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