The Blandford was a Bristol-based ship. Bristol was able to participate officially in the Transatlantic Slave Trade from 1698. In that year, the London-based Royal Africa Company lost its long-held monopoly over trade with the African continent following vigorous campaigning by Bristol's Society of Merchant Venturers, among others. This meant that British merchants operating outside of London could now do business with African slave traders.

By the 1730s Bristol had become Britain's biggest slaving port, but by the mid-century it was already being overtaken by its rival Liverpool. Between 1698 and 1807 it is known that 2,108 ships left Bristol for Africa to purchase enslaved people and transport them to the Caribbean. Bristol had also been the embarkation point for thousands of impoverished white labourers, child runaways, abandoned women, petty criminals and vagrants who were sent to work in the colonies in the sixteenth century prior to the development of the Transatlantic Slave Trade.

The following extracts are taken from writings by Bristol merchants engaged in the slave trade.

In January last we covenanted [agreed] with you to deliver you ten Negres Slaves to say five men and five women in the Island of Jamaica at £17 sterling p head to be pd. In this citty and according to the covenant with you we forthwith gave order to our factor Mr Robert Legg in Jamaica to deliver to you sd tenn negros to you ... Now we understand that Robert Legg did not deliver you sd Negros but for what reason we know not, and have sold them for lesse moneys than you were to pay for them and have also acted many other things to our own prejudice and losse ...Sir, we are much conserned that your order was not completed ... considering we were connected with so worthy a Gent. as you selfe though we believe noe way prejudicial to you notwithstanding that Mr Hellyar your overseer of your plantations writes you; for our negroes proved very sicke and dyseased this yeare, and lost forty of 120 and the rest were landed very much out of order and would have been capable but of very little service thise yeare if they had lived which is much to be feared. Letter from William Symmer and William Hayman, January 1864

To declaim upon the horrors of this trade would have been beside the question, and as far as I can see, could have answered no good purpose: for the impossibility of doing without slaves in the West-Indies [Caribbean] will always prevent this traffick [slave trade] being dropped. The necessity, the absolute necessity, then, of carrying it on, must, since there is not other, be its excuse. We would not, however, be quite silent upon this occasion. A hint will be forgiven by those who do not need it, in consideration of those who (Perhaps) do. We hope then, it will be ever remembered that the traffick is in human creatures; that sensibility and deep reflection upon their sad state do not operate very powerfully among the negroes; yet they are not totally devoid of them; that certain ties there are, which, when broken, affect even brutes; and that feeling, bodily feeling at least, is the portion of everything that has life. Shall we then forget that many of these poor creatures, to say nothing of their common misfortune, in leaving their native country for ever, have been torn from the woman, the child, the parent that they loved? Circumstances of so piteous a nature, as, instead of inspiring wanton cruelty, or cold neglect, should teach the white possessors to soften the misery of their condition by every safe and reasonable indulgence that their humanity can suggest, and that the nature of the case will admit. From an essay by John Hippisley, 1766

Do not suffer a negro to be corrected in his presence, or so near for him to hear the whip - and if you could allowance the gang at the lower work [ie give them less work], during his residence at the house, it would be advisable - point out the comforts the negroes enjoy beyond our poor in this country, drawing a comparison between the climates - show him the property they possess in goats, hogs, and poultry, and their negro-ground [gardens for growing their own food]. By this means he will leave the island possessed with favourable sentiments. From a letter by John Pinney to his plantation manager on the occasion of an investigative visit from the abolitionist Thomas Wedgwood

The following extract is from a book written by a Bristol sailor who served on slave ships as a young man and later became a Methodist prison chaplain.

One Sunday morning I was sent down to the gun room, in order to get the necessary provision for the ship's company; the Captain happening to find me at the bread-cask, declared that I had got much more than was wanted; he went immediately to his cabin for a horse-whip, and exercised it in so unmerciful a manner, that not only my cloaths was cut to pieces, but every sailor on board shuddered at the sight of my lacerated flesh; yet this barbarity did not satisfy him he threw me on the deck and stamped on my stomach several times, and had not the people taken me by the legs and thrown me under the Windlass, he would have ended his despotic cruelty by murder. From The Life and Dealings of God with Silas Told, 1786

All the above extracts are taken from the website Port Cities: Bristol