William Boats (1716 – 1794) was a British merchant and slave trader based in Liverpool. According to historical records, he participated in the trans‑Atlantic slave trade during the eighteenth century, being responsible for 157 slave voyages, of which more than half transported enslaved people from the Bight of Biafra to Jamaica. Boats held shares in at least 156 Guineamen—ships employed in the African slave trade.
Boats is noted for being the first slaver to outfit his vessels with copper sheathing, a measure intended to protect hulls from wood‑boring parasites. Contemporary accounts, such as those in History of the Liverpool Privateers (1897), describe him as a waif rescued from a boat, educated at the Blue Coat School, and later apprenticed to the sea. The same source claims that he rose to become a leading merchant and shipowner in Liverpool, married a woman named Ms. Brideson, and captured a Spanish ship reputed to carry gold and treasure.
The details of his life and activities are documented in scholarly works on Liverpool’s involvement in the slave trade, including David Richardson’s Liverpool and Transatlantic Slavery (2007). Boats is listed among eighteenth‑century English slave traders and is associated with the broader economic and maritime history of Liverpool.
