Check Shirts, Flannel Jackets, Canvas Trousers: The Trade in Slops from Eighteenth-Century Liverpool

This paper seeks primarily to survey the evidence for the involvement of Liverpool traders and dealers in the profitable slop trade supplying the Royal Navy and the ever increasing merchant fleet involved in the slave trade from Africa across the Atlantic. It will provide examples that suggest that Liverpool was ideally placed, fiercely independent and commercially dominant, to be able to seize a sizeable portion of the trade in ready-made slop clothing for its resident merchants and sailors.