According to Bristol Museum Collections, Bristol's official involvement in the transatlantic trade of enslaved Africans started in 1698. Bristol was involved because the trade was risky, but profitable and Bristol was in a good place to exploit it. Bristol had direct contact with the West Indies since at least the sixteenth century. Up to this point the slave trade had not been a major factor in either of these trading relationships. But by the mid-seventeenth century, the growth of sugar cultivation in the Caribbean, and tobacco in Virginia and Maryland, ensured the demand for enslaved Africans, and so it began. This port had direct effects on encouraging the abolitionist movement and eventually led to the need for the Abolition of the Slave Trade act of 1807. 

Photo: Port of Bristol

Location: Bristol and the Transatlantic Traffic in Enslaved Africans - Bristol Museums Collections