Tracing Your Liverpool
Ancestors - Printer PDF.qxd
29/09/2009
10:39
Page 15
The Rise of the Port • 15
Here lay the key to the dogged perseverance of these Liverpool men, desperate to hold on to all vestiges of trading rights that had brought them such abundant prosperity. Liverpool politicians petitioned London again and again in defence of the trade between 1788 and 1807, a total of sixtyfour times, during a period when the government was being flooded with contrary petitions from towns all over the country. Not one petition in opposition came from Liverpool. After the abolition of 1807, many who would be affected by the revision in the law in Liverpool found such a restriction to their livelihood hard to swallow. General Banastre Tarleton, for example, who had long supported the trade, promised in the elections held in the town after the abolition that he would restore the trade if elected. It may astonish us now, but this was still a town where he could send out two black boys on the campaign trail carrying a banner ‘The African Trade Restored’ as he continued under his slogan ‘The Church and the Slave Trade for Ever!’. At least such action was condemned in the local press, however. After the abolition there were no riots and no attacks, but there was a dip in tonnage clearing the port in the first year. However, many vessels carried on the trade illegally, although even this petered out by the 1820s. Most operators had realised the abolition was inevitable and had begun to reassign vessels to other routes and trades from the 1790s. Consequently, the port did not go into decline as most had expected. Nevertheless, alternative profits were found in the refitting of slavers from elsewhere, notably Portugal, while all manner of slave-trading goods, such as fetters and manacles, continued to be crafted in Liverpool and shipped to the Americas well into the mid-century. Relatively few Africans made it as far as Liverpool during the period of the slave trade, but this has done nothing to dispel the frequently quoted urban myth that they were kept captive in the cellars beneath the buildings along the Goree and Strand while awaiting transhipment. To add credence the ‘original shackles’ can still be seen. This, however, is not true. The few Africans who were brought to Liverpool came as domestic servants, as it was considered fashionable among the upper classes to have a black servant. Some did come as seamen – records in the Maritime Museum (the Davenport Collection) feature wage books listing Africans as crew members. According to the Museum the ‘shackles’, which do exist in several waterfront cellars, are actually simple metal rings. The quickest and easiest way to lower cask goods into a shallow basement was by the technique known as ‘parbuckling’. Two ropes secured to rings in the basement wall are passed over the top of the cask, which is then rolled down the wall under control by a man on each of the ropes. When you consider the variety of goods that used to be packed in casks you can understand why there were lots of these ‘slave rings’ in Liverpool cellars.