Seaports, Port Types and Port Data

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The general definition of a seaport is a harbour or town that is able to receive boats and ships and load and unload cargo. Other types of port include fishing ports, inland ports, dry ports, warm water ports, and cruise home ports. A seaport can generally be further divided into two types; cargo and cruise. For all types of port, for both ship and shore based personnel it is valuable to have access to comprehensive and accurate port data, databases and port guides.

Harbours are natural or manmade shelters for ships and boats. They need to be deep enough to accept the draft of large boats and ships. You would normally expect a port to sit within a harbour, the two are distinctly different. A natural harbour will on the most part be surrounded by land which will have a sheltering effect on the waters within. A good example of a natural harbour is San Diego Bay in the USA which is 12 miles long. Manmade harbors are constructed with seawalls and breakwaters and sometimes require dredging due to sedimentation of sand and mud. The world's largest artificial port is Rotterdam in the Netherlands which was also the world's busiest cargo port for many years up until 2004 when it was overtaken by Shanghai. A warm water port or ice free harbor is a port that does not freeze over in the winter such as Valdez in Mexico giving the advantage of year round use. Ice free harbors even exist in extremely cold places such as Winter Quarters Bay in Antarctica.

Fishing ports are normally commercial centres for the harbouring of fishing vessels and landing of catches. They may have been some of the first historical ports to develop. A good example is Brixham in England that has a history reaching back over 1000 years and was mentioned in the Domesday book.

An inland port is a port that can be situated on a river or lake and have canal or river access to the sea.

A dry port is an inland terminal used for cargo storage and transport exchange that may be situated near to a seaport but with additional road, rail and air links for continued distribution of goods.

Cruise home ports are embarkation/disembarkation points for cruise ships where they will also take on supplies for voyages. Miami in the USA is the world's busiest cruise port.

Cargo ports are ports that handle a wide range of goods such as Petrochemicals, dry goods, minerals, cars and grains. Some ports will specialise in a certain commodity such as natural gas. To accommodate the large draft of commercial cargo vessels these ports need deep water channels for entry and egress. Due to the difficulties of navigating port entry there is usually a tug or piloting service operated by the port authority. An important part of port navigation can be the availability of good port data. This is normally provided in the form of port guides, a port directory or database. These will usually offer the information required such as mooring diagrams, port plans and a ship's atlas.