Politics were as important as economics to the merchants of Bristol. When the English lost their French lands in 1453, Bristol merchants had to find look further afield for trade and find new markets.

Robert Sturmy led an expedition to the eastern Mediterranean in 1457 to try to break the monopoly of Italian merchants in the spice trade. On their way back, the Genoese sent out pirates to attack the Bristol ships, resulting in the death of 128 men and the loss of all three ships, with their valuable cargoes. As John Heytone, one of the witnesses at the trial of the Genoese merchants in London in 1458, said, the pirates 'toke and distroyed all theyr seid shippes, merchaundises and goodes'.

This disaster created a major diplomatic incident nationally with the Genoese and, locally, prompted Bristol merchants to look westward instead of to Europe, leading to links with the New World that we know as America.

The petition quoted from merchants Richard Long, John Taylor and John Gonning shows one of the trades that developed: Bristol ships loaded dried fish in Newfoundland, sailed to Spain where they traded the fish for wine, and returned to Bristol. In the 1700s, the ships might take the salt cod direct to the Caribbean islands and trade them for sugar: salt cod was provided for the enslaved workers on the sugar plantations, and salt cod still features in local recipes.