The abolition of slavery in the British Empire meant that the sugar-growing plantations in the West Indies could not compete economically with sugarbeet grown in Europe. Plantation owners tried other crops, including cocoa and coffee, but the banana showed most promise. At first, most of the fruit was shipped to the USA, because it could not survive longer sea voyages without over-ripening. Specialist refrigerated cargo ships, developed in the 1890s, meant that unripe bananas could be brought to England in bulk and ripened here.

Dockers at Avonmouth unloaded the first cargo of bananas to Britain from Jamaica in 1901, a trade that continued for nearly 70 years. Almost overnight, the exotic banana became an everyday food. The trade re-established Bristol's links with Jamaica and the Caribbean following declining trade in the years after the ending of slavery on the Caribbean plantations. That first cargo, via the Imperial Direct West India Mail service Company, consisted of 18,000 stems of bananas. The Elders & Fyffes ships of the 1910s carried 80,000 stems, plus up to 200 passengers, although 'The first-class passenger is the banana'.