Seaports & Harbours of the World

The five Great Lakes hold about a fifth of the world's fresh surface water and form the largest inland shipping system on Earth. Since the St. Lawrence Seaway opened in 1959, ocean-going ships have been able to sail some 3,700 km from the Atlantic to the head of Lake Superior, though its locks limit them to about 225 m in length. The lake ports grew with the grain, iron ore, coal and steel trades of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

2 countries · Buffalo, Cleveland, Manitowoc, Duluth

The Gulf of St. Lawrence opens the main water route into the interior of North America, leading ships past Quebec City towards Montreal. Around it lie the harbours of the Maritime provinces and Newfoundland, and the Bay of Fundy, whose tides are the highest in the world. Basque whalers, French fishermen and the fur trade of New France came this way long before the grain and timber ships of the industrial age.

2 countries · Canaport (St. John), St John, Argentia, Quebec

From Maine to Florida the Atlantic seaboard is lined with drowned river valleys, sounds and barrier islands that shelter its harbours. Colonial towns grew on them, the Atlantic trade in tobacco, cotton and enslaved people passed through them, and the Hudson River and Chesapeake Bay carried ships far inland, to Albany and Baltimore. New York, Norfolk, Savannah and Charleston remain among the busiest ports in the Americas.

1 country · Chester, Brooklyn, Bridgeport, Portland

The Gulf of Mexico is an ocean basin of about 1.6 million km² enclosed by the United States, Mexico and Cuba. The Mississippi reaches it through its delta below New Orleans, and its western shore holds the oil and petrochemical ports of Louisiana and Texas, Houston among them, reached by a ship channel dredged across Galveston Bay. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the Spanish treasure fleets loaded silver at Veracruz before sailing for Havana and Spain.

2 countries · Tri-City Port, Galveston, Mobile, Houston

The Caribbean Sea lies between the arc of the Greater and Lesser Antilles and the coasts of Central and South America. It was the first sea of European colonisation in the Americas after 1492; its ports shipped sugar and silver and received the ships of the transatlantic slave trade, and pirates and navies fought over them. Today the shipping lanes to the Panama Canal cross it. The harbours of the Bahamas, Bermuda and the Atlantic coast of Cuba are listed here as well.

28 countries · Puerto la Cruz, Cienfuegos, Antilla, Bahai de la Habana

The Pacific shore from Washington to Panama has few natural harbours, so its ports grew where bays and rivers break the coast: Puget Sound, the Columbia River, San Francisco Bay and San Pedro Bay, where Los Angeles and Long Beach now handle much of North America's trade with Asia. The Manila galleons crossed from the Philippines to Acapulco every year from 1565 to 1815. The Gulf of California is covered here too.

7 countries · Seattle, Portland, Los Angeles, Ensenada

North of Puget Sound the coast breaks into the fjords and islands of the Inside Passage, a sheltered route past Vancouver Island and the Alaska Panhandle. Beyond lie the Gulf of Alaska, the Aleutian Islands and the Bering Sea, whose fishing harbours land some of the largest catches in the United States. Russian fur traders reached Alaska after Vitus Bering's voyage of 1741, and Russia sold it to the United States in 1867.

3 countries · New Westminster, Victoria Harbor, Prince Rupert, Anchorage

Hudson Bay, the channels of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago and the coasts of Greenland are open to shipping for only a few months of the year. The Hudson's Bay Company traded furs through its posts on the bay from 1670, and the search for a Northwest Passage drew expeditions into these waters for three centuries before Roald Amundsen first sailed it in 1903–1906. The harbours of Greenland are listed here.

2 countries · Pond Inlet, Paamuit (Frederikshab), Illulissat (Jakobshavn), Kusanartoq

South America's Atlantic shore runs from the Guianas past the mouth of the Amazon and the long coast of Brazil to the Río de la Plata and Patagonia. Portuguese Brazil exported sugar, gold and coffee through Salvador, Rio de Janeiro and Santos, while Buenos Aires and Montevideo grew on the estuary of the Plata, through which the grain and beef of the Pampas are still shipped. River ports far up the Paraná are counted with the estuary.

7 countries · Rio de Janeiro, Tubarao, Belem, Porto Alegre

The Pacific coast of South America runs beside the Andes from Colombia to Cape Horn, with desert in the north and fjords and channels in the far south. Callao served as the port of Lima and the Spanish viceroyalty of Peru, shipping the silver of Potosí, and Valparaíso prospered as a stop for ships rounding Cape Horn until the Panama Canal opened in 1914.

4 countries · Antofagasta, Puerto del Callao, Bahia de Valdivia, Iquitos

The North Sea is a shallow shelf sea of the Atlantic, averaging about 95 m deep, between Great Britain, Norway, Denmark, Germany and the Low Countries. Rotterdam, Antwerp, Hamburg and London grew on the estuaries of the Rhine and Meuse, the Scheldt, the Elbe and the Thames that open onto it, and it was the home water of the Vikings, the Hanseatic League and the Dutch merchant fleets. Its oil and gas fields have been worked since the 1960s.

7 countries · Dundee, Bremen, London, Antwerpen

The Skagerrak and the Kattegat are the straits between Norway, Sweden and Denmark's Jutland peninsula that join the North Sea to the Baltic. Every ship bound into the Baltic passes through them and the Danish straits beyond, where Denmark levied the Sound Toll from 1429 to 1857. Gothenburg, Sweden's largest port, stands at the mouth of the Göta River on the Kattegat, and the Oslofjord opens off the Skagerrak.

4 countries · Malmo, Oslo, Uddevalla, Falkenberg

The Baltic is a shallow, brackish inland sea enclosed by Scandinavia, Finland, the Baltic states, Russia, Poland and Germany, with the Gulfs of Bothnia, Finland and Riga reaching deep into the land. Its northern harbours freeze in winter and are kept open by icebreakers. From the thirteenth century the Hanseatic League traded grain, timber, furs, fish and wax between Lübeck, Danzig, Riga, Visby and Novgorod.

9 countries · Sankt-Peterburg, Pori, Rostock, Kiel

Warm Atlantic water carried north by the extension of the Gulf Stream keeps the long, fjord-cut coast of Norway free of ice far into the Arctic, as far as the Barents Sea and Murmansk, the largest port north of the Arctic Circle. Fishing harbours line the whole coast, and Bergen was the northern office of the Hanseatic League. The harbours of Iceland, the Faroe Islands and Svalbard are listed here too.

5 countries · Dudinka, Trondheim, Grundartangi, Hammerfest

Between Great Britain and Ireland lie the Irish Sea and St George's Channel, which open south to the Celtic Sea and the Bristol Channel, with one of the largest tidal ranges in the world, and north to the sea lochs and islands of western Scotland. Liverpool rose on the Mersey with the Atlantic trade, Cardiff and Swansea shipped Welsh coal, and Glasgow built ships on the Clyde. The Atlantic harbours of Ireland are covered here as well.

4 countries · Manchester, Foynes, Belfast, Rade de Brest

The English Channel separates southern England from northern France and narrows to about 33 km at the Strait of Dover, making it one of the busiest seaways in the world. Its harbours, from Southampton, Portsmouth and Plymouth to Le Havre, Cherbourg and the Channel Islands, served navies, ocean liners and cross-Channel ferries, and the Allied landings of June 1944 came ashore on its Normandy coast.

2 countries · Rade de Cherbourg, Southampton, Boulogne-Sur-Mer, Portland Harbour

The Bay of Biscay curves from Brittany to Galicia, long feared by sailors for its Atlantic storms, and the coast of Iberia runs on south past Porto and Lisbon to Cádiz. From Lisbon and Seville the voyages of the Portuguese and Spanish empires set out in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and Basque harbours sent whalers to Newfoundland. The harbours of the Canary Islands and the Azores are listed here as well.

3 countries · Las Palmas, Bordeaux, Funchal, Rochefort

West of Sicily the Mediterranean takes in the Alboran, Balearic, Ligurian and Tyrrhenian Seas between Spain, France, Italy and North Africa. Carthage and Rome fought for these waters, Genoa, Pisa and Barcelona built medieval trading empires on them, and Marseille, Genoa, Valencia and Barcelona remain among the Mediterranean's largest ports. The Strait of Gibraltar is the sea's only natural opening to the ocean.

7 countries · Barcelona, Genova, Alger, Tarragona

The Adriatic runs some 800 km between Italy and the Balkan coast, from Venice and Trieste to the Strait of Otranto, where it opens into the deeper Ionian Sea west of Greece. For centuries the Republic of Venice dominated its trade, with Ragusa, now Dubrovnik, as its rival, and the islands of the Dalmatian coast still shelter hundreds of small harbours.

6 countries · Split, Brindisi, Taranto, Siracusa

The Aegean, between Greece and Anatolia, is scattered with more than a thousand islands; through the Dardanelles it leads to the Sea of Marmara and, by the Bosporus at Istanbul, to the Black Sea. Minoan, Mycenaean and Athenian sea power grew here, and Piraeus, fortified as the port of Athens in the fifth century BCE, is again one of the busiest container ports in the Mediterranean.

2 countries · Izmir, Alexandroupoli, Ormos Aliveriou, Soudha

East of Sicily and south of the Aegean, the Mediterranean reaches the shores of Libya, Egypt, the Levant, Cyprus and southern Turkey. Phoenician Tyre and Sidon, Ptolemaic Alexandria and the crusader ports of Acre and Jaffa all traded here, and since 1869 the Suez Canal at Port Said has joined the sea to the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean. The southern coasts of Sicily, Malta and Tunisia face this basin too.

11 countries · Damietta, Baniyas, Mersin, Tarabulus

The Black Sea is an almost enclosed basin between Ukraine, Russia, Georgia, Turkey, Bulgaria and Romania, joined to the Mediterranean only through the Bosporus and the Dardanelles; below about 150 m its water holds almost no oxygen. Greek colonies lined its shores from the seventh century BCE, Genoese and Venetian merchants traded at Caffa and Tana, and the grain of Ukraine and southern Russia is shipped from its ports and from those of the shallow Sea of Azov.

6 countries · Odesa, Sevastopol, Varna, Samsun

The Red Sea is a narrow rift between Africa and Arabia, more than 2,000 km long, joined to the Mediterranean by the Suez Canal and to the Indian Ocean by the Bab-el-Mandeb strait and the Gulf of Aden. Egyptian expeditions sailed it to the land of Punt, Roman ships carried pepper from India to its harbours, and Jeddah has long been the port of pilgrims bound for Mecca. The Gulfs of Suez and Aqaba are covered here.

9 countries · Ain Sukhna Terminal, Ras Isa Marine Terminal, al Mukha, Ras Shukhier

The Persian Gulf is a shallow sea, nowhere much deeper than 90 m, between Iran and the Arabian Peninsula, entered only through the Strait of Hormuz. Its pearl banks and the harbours of Hormuz, Bahrain and Basra traded with India and East Africa for millennia, and since the oil discoveries of the twentieth century its terminals have shipped a large share of the world's crude oil.

8 countries · Bushehr, Bandar Abbas, Khorramshahr, Abadan

Africa's Atlantic coast runs from Morocco past Senegal and the Gulf of Guinea to Angola and Namibia, with few sheltered bays. Portuguese navigators charted it in the fifteenth century, and forts such as Elmina and the island of Gorée became centres of the gold trade and of the transatlantic slave trade. The Gulf of Guinea's harbours now export oil, cocoa and minerals. Saint Helena and the other South Atlantic islands are listed here too.

20 countries · Agadir, Casablanca, Pennington Oil Terminal, Nouadhibou

From Somalia to the Cape, Africa's Indian Ocean coast lies on the monsoon routes that brought Arab, Persian, Indian and, in the fifteenth century, Chinese ships to the Swahili towns of Kilwa, Mombasa and Zanzibar. Vasco da Gama rounded the Cape of Good Hope in 1497 on his way to India, and Durban and Cape Town became the great ports of the south. The harbours of Madagascar, Mauritius, Réunion and the other Indian Ocean islands are listed here too.

10 countries · Durban, Muqdisho, Cape Town, Beira

The Indian subcontinent divides the northern Indian Ocean into the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal, where the monsoon winds set the rhythm of sailing for millennia. Harappan Lothal, Muziris in the Roman era and Mughal Surat traded on the western coast, and the East India Companies founded Bombay, Madras and Calcutta, from which Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata grew. The harbours of Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Myanmar are covered here.

9 countries · Calcutta, Mumbai (Bombay), Chennai (Madras), Chittagong

The Strait of Malacca, between Sumatra and the Malay Peninsula, is the shortest sea route between the Indian Ocean and the Pacific and one of the most heavily used shipping lanes in the world. Srivijaya and then the sultanate of Malacca controlled the trade through it, Portuguese, Dutch and British fleets fought for it, and Singapore, founded as a British trading post in 1819 at its southern end, is now one of the world's busiest ports.

4 countries · Jurong Island, Port Klang, Belawan, Pulau Bukom

The South China Sea stretches from Singapore and the Gulf of Thailand to the Taiwan Strait, bordered by China, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, the Philippines and Indonesia. The maritime Silk Road ran across it to Guangzhou, Hong Kong grew at the mouth of the Pearl River, and its reefs and islands, the Spratly and Paracel groups among them, are claimed by several states.

8 countries · Bangkok, Manila, Lon Shui Terminal, Tapis Marine Terminal A

Indonesia's more than 17,000 islands enclose a maze of seas, the Java, Flores, Banda and Molucca Seas and the Makassar Strait among them. The Moluccas were the original Spice Islands, for centuries the only source of cloves and nutmeg, which drew the Portuguese and then the Dutch East India Company, whose capital Batavia is now Jakarta. Indonesia's Indian Ocean and South China Sea harbours are counted with those seas.

2 countries · Cilacap, Jakarta, Kasim Terminal, Surabaya

The Philippine archipelago lies between the deep Philippine Sea to the east and the Sulu and Celebes Seas to the south, which it shares with Malaysian Sabah and Indonesian Sulawesi. Manila was the Asian end of the Spanish galleon trade with Acapulco from 1565 to 1815, exchanging Chinese silk and porcelain for Mexican silver, and its bay remains the country's chief harbour.

3 countries · Cebu, Cagayan de Oro, Tanjungredeb, Tagbilaran

The Yellow Sea, between China and Korea, takes its name from the silt carried into it by the Yellow River; to the south the East China Sea and the Taiwan Strait wash China's busiest coast. Shanghai at the mouth of the Yangtze, Ningbo-Zhoushan and Qingdao are among the largest container ports in the world. The harbours of Taiwan are covered here too.

4 countries · Shanghai, Inchon, Tianjin Xin Gang, Wenzhou

The Sea of Japan lies between the Japanese islands, Korea and the Russian Far East, joined to the open ocean only by narrow straits; to the north, much of the Sea of Okhotsk freezes each winter. Vladivostok, the Pacific terminus of the Trans-Siberian Railway, faces it from the mainland, and Japan's western coast along it holds the harbours of Niigata and the Hokuriku region. Russia's Pacific harbours are counted here.

4 countries · Vladivostok, de Kastri, Fukui Ko, Hakodate Ko

The Seto Inland Sea separates Honshu, Shikoku and Kyushu, a sheltered waterway scattered with some 3,000 islands. For more than a thousand years it was Japan's main highway between the capital region and Kyushu, travelled by envoys to China and by the merchants of Sakai and Osaka, and its shores hold the shipyards and industrial harbours of Osaka, Kobe, Hiroshima and Mizushima.

1 country · Onomichi-Itozaki, Osaka, Kobe, Hiroshima

Japan's Pacific coast, from Hokkaido to Kyushu and the Ryukyu Islands, holds the great bays around which modern Japan grew: Tokyo Bay, with Tokyo, Yokohama and Chiba, and Ise Bay with Nagoya. Commodore Perry's American squadron anchored at the mouth of Tokyo Bay in 1853, and the treaty ports opened in its wake, Yokohama among them, began Japan's trade with the West. Kyushu's East China Sea harbours, Nagasaki among them, are included here.

1 country · Mikawa, Wakayama-Shimotsu Ko, Nagasaki, Nagoya Ko

Australia's harbours are spread along a mainland coastline of some 35,000 km, from the iron-ore terminals of the Pilbara, Dampier and Port Hedland among the largest bulk-export ports in the world, to Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane in the south-east. The First Fleet anchored in Sydney Cove in 1788. The harbours of New Zealand and of Australia's external territories are listed here too.

2 countries · Brisbane, Wellington, Fremantle, Melbourne

The islands of Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia were settled by voyagers who navigated by the stars, the swells and the flight of birds over thousands of years. Their harbours, from Hawaii and Guam to Fiji, Papua New Guinea and French Polynesia, later served as coaling stations, whaling ports and naval bases, and several were fought over in the Pacific War of 1941–1945.

18 countries · Hilo, Apra Harbor, Honolulu, Ushuaia

The Southern Ocean circles Antarctica, where there are no permanent ports; ships supply research stations from anchorages and ice piers during the short summer. Sealers and whalers worked these waters from the nineteenth century, and South Georgia's whaling stations, Grytviken and Stromness among them, supplied much of the world's whale oil in the early twentieth century.

2 countries · Melchior Harbor, Ellefsen Harbor, Port Lockroy, Admiralty Bay