By about 1700 Bristol had become an important centre of the slave trade, followed by London and Liverpool. Liverpool soon overtook both Bristol and London, however, and slave-trading became the single most important activity of its merchants. By the last decade of the 18th century, 132 slave ships sailed annually to Africa from Liverpool.
At the height of the British slave trade, nearly 90 per cent of the British ships belonging to Liverpool merchants carried slaves. Williams wrote: *It was a common saying that several of the principal streets of Liverpool had been marked out by the chains and the walls of the houses cemented by the blood of African slaves, and one street nicknamed "Negro Row"
The trade in black human merchandise was so financially profitable, and so much money poured into the British Treasury from the trade, that the King issued a new coin called the guinea - named after the area in Africa from which many of the SaVes Were taKen The economic benefits gained by Britain from the transportation of Africans to the New World was not limited to the direct financial profits accruing from the trade. There were also indirect benefits - for instance, the direct stimulus received by English shipbuilding from the slave trade. English industry also gained