The considerable demand for shipping services in eighteenth-century Bristol meant that the wharves and quays in the centre of the city were thronged with many different types of wooden sailing ships – Severn trows, coasters, lighters, towboats and ocean-going vessels of various rigs and sizes. The miscellany of vessels can be glimpsed in Peter Monamy's contemporary painting of Broad Quay (now in the Bristol City Art Gallery) or in the marine scenes painted by Nicholas Pocock, who had served as a master on several transatlantic voyages from Bristol. The striking visual effect of so many ships clustered together caught the attention of the poet, Alexander Pope. In 1739, on a visit to Bristol, he observed that on the quay there were ‘as far as you can see, hundreds of ships, their Masts as thick as they can stand by one another, which is the oddest and most surprising sight imaginable’. By mid-century, the port of Bristol was congested with vessels. The regular sale of ships by auction added to the air of commercial bustle. The shipping involved in Bristol's Atlantic trade during the eighteenth century is the focus of this chapter. The analysis concentrates, first of all, on the ownership of vessels, the places where ships were built, and the size of ships. It then examines selected features of Bristol's shipping in the Virginia and Jamaica trades, which carried the bulkiest and most valuable cargoes. Particular emphasis is given here to productivity trends in order to determine what gains in efficiency were achieved over time in these major staple trades.