The documents pertaining to David Tuohy are those of an Irishman who spent fourteen years in the African trade, including the captaincy of four slave voyages between 1765 and 1769 and part-ownership of ten Liverpool slave ships from 1772 to 1786. Tuohy married in Liverpool in 1768 and settled there in 1771. After his experience as a captain of slave vessels, he settled down as a merchant on Merseyside. In Gore’s Liverpool Directory for 1781, he is described as a merchant resident at 48 Old Hall Street. His correspondence indicates that he conducted trade between Liverpool and Ireland,  importing beef, butter and tallow, and exported beer, cheese, and salt. He also remained active in the transatlantic slave trade. Tuohy participated in voyages where he could spread his investment among other partners, as in the voyage of the Brig Nancy in 1774, in which he held a one-sixth share (380 TUO/4/7). His ventures in the triangular slave trade involved sending ships to the Windward, Ivory and Gold coasts, the Bight of Benin, and especially Angola, and then selling Africans at Jamaica, Barbados, St. Kitts, Antigua, Dominica, and Grenada. Tuohy had few mercantile contacts on the North American continent apart from in Charleston, South Carolina. He probably died in the late 1780s or early 1790s; the last mention of him in these papers is a letter addressed to him dated September 1788 (380 TUO/6/4).