Ports and Harbours

Ports and Harbors

Ports and harbors are principal establishments on sea coasts that generally serve as beginning, intermediate and end points of a cargo ship’s voyage. (* Dry ports are similar establishments but exist in non-coastal areas). Ocean trade routes across the world are serviced by ports as points of cargo handling, ship maintenance and gateway storage. Most of today’s busiest ports existed since the ancient times. Many have been built and rebuilt during and following world war periods. Ports employ thousands of skilled and unskilled workers directly and indirectly in the vicinity of the port area. 

Many more thousands are employed in the hinterland.

Ports can sometimes appear even to support the entire economy of a country like Singapore. Ports are high security zones and highly specialized cargo handling operations are performed 24 X 7. The best way to understand the overwhelming significance of ports to general economy and shipping industry in particular is to read through the available on-line material and if possible, directly witness the activities by taking necessary permissions from the relevant Authorities.

Today’s ports measure their success in terms of total TEUs (Twenty Equivalent Units) handled through their container terminals. Ideal measure would be the actual value of cargo handled but ports claim that their specialization is in handling heavy boxes and large quantities of cargo than caring about their underlying value.

Ports are generally adjoined by huge warehouses, both private and public. This is necessary because the entire cargo that arrived in the port may not have immediate takers for final consumption. Similarly, the export cargo may have to wait before it is directed to specific destinations in designated ships, in which case it will be temporarily stored in the warehouses. Sometimes cargo facing duty / tax or freight related disputes will also be held in designated warehouses before the solution is arrived at.

Few nautical miles away from the port’s ‘mouth’ or entrance channel, limited areas in the Sea are designated as ‘roads’ where the incoming ship anchor and wait for customs clearance (permissions and approvals) to enter the harbour. Ships at the roads undergo Customs verification of their documents and cargo, a process known as ‘rummaging’. In India, Customs officers of the rank of an Assistant Commissioner of Customs perform these verifications.

Ports such as Visakhapatnam, India have what is known as an Outer harbour that provides more depth to ships that are heavily laden. Depth to which a laden ship’s bottom can submerge to is known as ‘draft or even ‘draught’. The asset collection of wharves and Jetties and the pavement marking the ship’s mooring positions may be generally considered as the harbour area.

Ports and harbours primarily exist to principally service a two important entities. One the cargo and two the ship. Both ships and cargoes exist in various shapes, sizes, types and purposes. A beginner can view the port as a facility for receiving ships and transferring cargo. But as we delve more in to the subject, we expand our scope of the definition.

They are usually situated at the edge of an ocean, sea, river, or lake. Ports often have cargo-handling equipment such as cranes (operated by longshoremen) and forklifts for use in loading/unloading of ships, which may be provided by private interests or public bodies. Often, canneries or other processing facilities will be located nearby. Harbor pilots and tugboats are often used to maneuver large ships in tight quarters as they approach and leave the docks. Ports which handle international traffic have customs facilities.

The terms "port" and "seaport" are used for ports that handle ocean-going vessels, and "river port" is used for facilities that handle river traffic, such as barges and other shallow draft vessels. Some ports on a lake, river, or canal have access to a sea or ocean, and are sometimes called "inland ports". A "fishing port" is a type of port or harbor facility particularly suitable for landing and distributing fish. A "dry port" is a term sometimes used to describe a yard used to place containers or conventional bulk cargo, usually connected to a seaport by rail or road. A "warm water port" is a port where the water does not freeze in winter.

Because they are available year-round, warm water ports can be of great geopolitical or economic interest, with the ports of Saint Petersburg and Valdez being notable examples. A "port of call" is an intermediate stop, for example to collect supplies or fuel. Cargo containers allow efficient transport and distribution by eliminating loading of smaller packages at each transportation point, and allowing the shipping unit to be sealed for its entire journey. Standard containers can easily be loaded on a ship, train, truck, or airplane, greatly simplifying intermodal transfers. Cargo often arrives by train and truck to be consolidated at a port and loaded onto a large container ship for international transport. At the destination port, it is distributed by ground transport.

The world's busiest port is contested by several ports around the world, as there is as yet no standardized means of evaluating port performance and traffic. For the past decade the distinction has been claimed by both the Port of Rotterdam and the Port of Singapore. The former based its measurement on cargo tonnage handled (total weight of goods loaded and discharged), while the latter ranks in terms of shipping tonnage handled (total volume of ships handled). Since 2005, the Port of Shanghai has exceeded both ports to take the title in terms of total cargo tonnage. According to various sources the following ports have variously made claims to be largest world port: Port of Shanghai, Port of Singapore, Port of Rotterdam, Port of HongKong, Port of New York/New Jersey.

Various dictionaries give the following main entries for the word ‘port’:

• a place on a waterway with facilities for loading and unloading ships.

• a city or town on a waterway with such facilities.

• the waterfront district of a city.

• a place along a coast that gives ships and boats protection from

storms and rough water; a harbor.

In what follows several aspects of ports worldwide will be discussed (port structures, port terminals, basic port information, port regulations, etc.).

Port Systems

The terms port, harbor and haven are more or less synonymous, but each of them also has specific meanings. A harbour (US spelling "harbor") is a place of security and comfort, a small bay or other sheltered part of an area of water, usually well protected against high waves and strong currents, and deep enough to provide anchorage for ships and other craft. It is also a place where port facilities are provided, e.g. accommodation for ships and cargo handling facilities.

The term port or seaport normally includes the harbour and the adjacent town or city suitable for loading goods and embarking men. A haven is a type of harbour used in literature or in names and adds the idea of refuge. Ships are accommodated and handled, i.e. loaded and unloaded, at such port structures as; wharves or quays, piers and jetties, and sometimes alongside moles or breakwaters. Any place where a ship can safely lie alongside a quay, pier or dock, at anchor or a buoy, and where she can carry out loading/discharge operations or embark and disembark passengers is called a berth.

A dry dock is a type of dock consisting of a rectangular basin dug into the shore of a body of water and provided with a removable enclosure wall or gate on the side toward the water, used for major repairs and overhaul of vessels. When a ship is to be docked, the dry dock is flooded, and the gate removed.

A port may be defined or characterized by several criteria. It is both a frontier and a link between the two worlds of water and land. They are physically totally different and in many cases have different and sometimes specific laws, customs and usages. While international exchanges are the very essence of the sea and river world, the land-based world is marked by the specific features of the laws of each State. Ports are places of intense commercial activity, rest and safety for ships, and natural or man-made shelters where ships can load or unload their cargo. Ports are also places that are equipped to provide a link between water transport and land or air transport.

There are probably over 2,000 ports in the world, varying in size from wharves handling at most a few hundred tonnes of cargo a year, to large international ports being true multi-modal hubs in which are concentrated the full range of logistical services, from warehousing to total management of the supply chain, and through which up to 300,000 tonnes of cargo may pass each year. It has also proved very difficult to obtain precise figures concerning the number of dockworkers in specific countries or in the world. Only a few countries have provided in their reports an estimate of the number of dockworkers in their national ports. There are several factors which may explain this lack of statistics, in particular the diversity of methods of defining dockworkers, which may vary from country to country or from one port to another, and also the existence or otherwise of a system of registration or
maintenance of statistics.