Ports... where they should and should not appear

[eepjr24]

Does anyone have any resources on the development of ports in the pre-modern era? Looking for anything pre-steam engine and after the beginning of widespread use of sailing ships.

My thoughts from reading thus far are that draft is probably the most important factor. After draft, things that vary draft like tides, silt, weather, rocks and reefs would be up next. Third would be land accessibility for continued transport over land unless the port is strictly a waypoint port or of military significance. Some ports are oceanside, others go some distance up a river (some quite far in the modern age and apparently even historically).

Is there a good book, website, or other resource on the subject that you know of? I find a lot on navigation, development of ships, etc. but not much on the actual importance of site in the port development since it was likely an organic process.

- Ernie

[Redrobes]

The usual requirement is that its calm. Most ports that I know of that are not man made have some kind of natural ourcrop that defends against the waves so that when docked the boats are not moving up and down by the quayside and thus damaging them or presenting a dangerous disembark. If wind is usually from the West for example, anywhere where the land curls around and presents the opening to the East is a likely spot. Draft would certainly be important to larger ships. Also, the proximity to production sites is a strong reason to have a port. For example where Romans had lead, tin or silver mining operations based in location having the ore they needed barges out to the coast and ships from there to get it back to Rome. With no water, transportation of heavy goods is very hard and therefore expensive. When you do get to the industrial ages then they built some very long canals for goods. The effort to build the canal was worth it overall which shows how expensive overland transport must have been. This is likely true at any age from mesolithic right up to todays container ships and the standardization of lorry containers for loading onto the ships at docks. So the location of the ports is not only driven by geography but also by necessity / economics. I dont have an actual book or link to give you tho.

[eepjr24]

Okay, that all make sense with what I have read and means a likely change to one of the ports I was considering, which would have been used for ore exports primarily.

Thank you for the feedback, if you'd like to make any specific comments on the diagram below I would appreciate it. Here is what I am looking at right now:



Since the port city at 1 was intended to export ore, I'll likely move it to somewhere in A. The other port I will leave.

B is not appropriate for a port city due to both the prevailing winds from the East and the lower draft. There will probably be a town here which has fishing and maybe local shipping when weather is good or someone is paying enough to take the risks.

C is a river canyon of large magnitude with the average shore height in the area being 50+ feet above sea level, no port. There might be a rush town nearby as the canyon waters can be panned for silver and gold which is a huge temptation even given the risks of the water and the neighboring border which does not take kindly to intruders.

D is in the midst of a rainforest. There may be an abandoned port city here, the colonizers did not factor in the aggressiveness of the local flora and fauna and thought they could simply tame it but that proved to not be the case.

Towns upriver from A and B seem likely as they could barge ore and other trade goods down the river to the city or town below. This might be seasonal, I have to find and read some things on barge use during snow melt and spring rainy seasons. If you have suggestions, I am all ears. =)

PS. My definitions for "City" and "Town" are a bit nebulous yet, I will work on those as well as I see what type of trades and resources can support what type of population growth.

- Ernie

[waldronate]

In general, a transhipment point will occur when the cost of one mode of transport becomes larger enough that it's cheaper to switch modes than to continue on. Draft is an example where the cost of staying watergoing can be more expensive than switching to land. There may be additional costs such as rocky coasts (it's cheaper to find a harbor than land on rocks), huge tides (some boats don't take kindly to being beached by an outgoing tide), and so on. A seasonal port can happen when a route becomes navigable only at certain times of year: cargo accumulates until the transit becomes available and then there's a rush to get everything moved at once (ice roads can be considered an example of this).

A very general rule of thumb is that you'll find a seagoing port at the cheapest place where land and ocean travel can meet. This might be on the coast or upriver. A port might occur in two stages, split by falls or rapids that require portage and an upstream location that's the primary land-sea interface. A special case of that is a pair of ports on opposite sides of a narrow isthmus connecting two large landmasses because it's still much cheaper for some cargos to take the quick route over the isthmus than to have them spoil.

Draft can be important, but it may be cheaper to put the port downstream from the absolute draft limit for all ships. Keeping the water deeper avoids unexpected sandbars and limits the effect of seasonal variations while allowing larger ships to make the port. Oceangoing vessels can dock at the port while smaller ships can carry traffic onward to the final destinations (see Manaus, Brazil for an example of an inland port without a huge amount of immediate overland connections).

Note that a port's importance can change over time. If your port is on a distributary on a delta and that distributary dries up, so will the port (see Herakleion/Tanis in Egypt). Simple silting can require expensive dredging operations to keep a port active, especially in highly seasonal rivers (see New Orleans). New technology (e.g. better technology for piles) can turn a previously unsuitable or marginal site into a bustling area. A dam on a river can starve the lower reaches of sediment and flood out upper previous port areas (see the Aswan dam in Egypt, the Three Gorges dam in China, and any number of landslides through history).

As far as a good resource for development of ports, I really can't think of one offhand.

[eepjr24]

Thanks, Waldronate, that's a large number of historical examples for me to look up, that should help a lot!

- E

[Falconius]

People in the ancient world could also build ports out of pure bloody mindedness and stubbornness. For instance the port at Ceasera that Herod built. Things like that tend to be more about vanity and ego than actual practicality though. The ports in both Acre and Jaffa, which are extremely ancient, have rocky land spurs that aided in the construction of a port. Ancient people also built breakwaters and things of that nature to improve ports, as well as developing fully protected walled ports al la the most famous of those, Carthage. To my mind Tyre is the most interesting ancient port city. It was built on the end of an isthmus so basically sat far out in the sea with a natural land bridge and had a couple of protected harbours on either side of the land bridge facing away from the sea.

Nowadays ships obviously have a much deeper draft and far less maneuverability given their insane size, so ports are very different in scale and location than would have served the boats of the old world which we would have considered very small. Consider that for most ancient ships propelling them by means of oars was a practical possibility/necessity.

Edit: Whoops, I thought you were talking about a time before the "age of sail."

Edit: I will point out that as with many things the culmination and peak of the great sail ships and clippers overlapped with the beginning of steam ships by probably a good century. Building 1000+ton wooden trade ships, as far as I know, really only became very common by around the 1850's-60's. And they were completing very long journeys (like Nova Scotia to Australia) very quickly... for sailing ships.

[waldronate]

To my mind Tyre is the most interesting ancient port city. It was built on the end of an isthmus so basically sat far out in the sea with a natural land bridge and had a couple of protected harbours on either side of the land bridge facing away from the sea..

Tyre was an island. Now it's a peninsula. There was this ****ed-off guy called Alexander, you see, who wanted to talk to the local king...

[Falconius]

Tyre was an island. Now it's a peninsula. There was this ****ed-off guy called Alexander, you see, who wanted to talk to the local king...

I thought it was Tyre that he layed to siege that way but couldn't remember if it was that city or a different one. It's a cool story. Tyre is a cool city. There's also that french Monte-Saint-Micheal which has similar features, but that was never a port. Venice is also a pretty unique set up.

But they are very atypical. So back to the OP. Most typical ports got built on a spur or hook of land that projects into the ocean, or at natural harbours. There are also plenty of ports built inland on easily navigable large rivers. These are the ones that grew quite powerful in the period preceding steam. London, Hamburg, Montreal, Philadelphia, New York, Washington. Keep in mind that all of those have huge rivers with lots of access. In the medieval period and before Florence and Rome had rivers the Arno and the Tiber that were large enough to make a difference. The key for really successful port cities is to have places which are both easily defensible with the technology of the time, and that allow access to the trade ships at the time. So features that fit this bill is what people would look for and gravitate towards when building a port.

[eepjr24]

Thanks Falconius and Waldronate! Lots of good info here. I just need to adapt it a bit to account for the fact that some things could be overcome by the application of magic (generally things like making brute force labor available, but at a cost) and some additional problems could be caused by magic (your port had to be able to stand bad weather even if it was not normal for the area, because weather mages do exist although they are rare).

- Ernie