This book provides full case studies and fresh, critical analysis of the principal voyage patterns, commodities, traders and shipping of Bristol and its region in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the widely acknowledged 'Golden Age' of the port. Making use of data derived from port books, Dr Hussey argues that the extensive coastal and river network that served Bristol provided a vital link in the organisation of the pre-industrial economy of the city and its domestic hinterland - south-west England, the central and west Midland counties, the Welsh Borderlands and south and south-west Wales. The book covers Bristol and the ports of the Bristol Channel and Severn Valley, Somerset, North Devon, Cornwall, central and west Midlands, Welsh Borderlands, south Wales. It is the first book-length study to come from a nationally-funded major project to computerise the Coastal and Inland Port Books and will be of interest to students and scholars of urban, economic, social and maritime history.