Culturally important and relevent today. By 1783 three ports in England – London, Bristol, and Liverpool – accounted for over sixty per cent of privateering commissions. History of the Liverpool Privateers… is still considered to be the best source of information on privateering and the slave trade, from Liverpool or any other port. Gomer Williams worked as a journalist for the Liverpool Mercury and drew on newspapers, private correspondence and first-hand accounts of the slave trade to produce his book. Writing in 1897, Williams lamented the fact that Africans were still being threatened by the commercial interests of Europeans.