She made five complete voyages as a Liverpool-based slave ship in the triangular trade, transporting enslaved people from West Africa to the Caribbean.

A French warship captured her in 1793 as she was on her way from West Africa to Jamaica on her sixth voyage transporting captives.

1st enslaving voyage (1787–1788): On 31 March 1787 Captain Henry Kennedy sailed from Liverpool, bound for Calabar, where she would acquire captives.

Captain James McGauley, of Othello, had ordered the shot fired because the natives on that coast owed him a debt and he had declared that he would permit no trade until they had paid him.

[c] The court found for the plaintiffs, establishing that it is a tort "to cause damage to a person by maliciously using any unlawful means, (e.g. fraud, or threats of assault), to induce anyone to abstain from entering into a contract with him.

Banastre started acquiring captives at Cape Coast Castle on 4 August, and sailed for the West Indies on 10 September.

[5] 3rd enslaving voyage (1789–1790): Captain Bowskill sailed from Liverpool on 22 May 1789, this time to the Bight of Biafra and Gulf of Guinea islands.

[3] Captain Rigmaiden sailed from Liverpool on 16 October 1810, bound for the Bight of Biafra and Gulf of Guinea islands.

[5] On 24 June 1791 Banastre arrived in Dominica from New Calabar with 170 captives: 79 men, 55 women, 23 girls, and 13 boys.

Lloyd's List reported on 6 August 1793 that a French frigate of 44 guns had captured Banastre as she was sailing from London to Jamaica, and had taken her into Santo Domingo.

[12] In 1793, 17 British enslaving vessels were lost, nine of them in the Middle Passage, while sailing between Africa and the West Indies.