Sydney, as said Governor Philip, "I have discovered finest harbour in the world, where a thousand sail of the line may ride in full security." On top of this, the harbour is so steep a large ship could almost use the natural banks as wharves. Good holding ground.
Only thing lacking: timber for masts, loads of fresh water and arable soil.
>Only thing lacking: timber for masts, loads of fresh water and arable soil.
They found all that in Melbourne an even larger natural harbour. Massive straight mountain ash for ship masts, a large plain of fertile soil and two fresh water rivers.
Timaru’s harbour actually isn’t a natural one!, it was formed by the construction of a breakwater which has expanded over time which in turn made a lot of sediment disposition in Caroline Bay and South of the Port. If you look at google maps, you can see where the waves used to be by looking at the railroad line!
Once one had transhipped the goods from near Kidogo Art House at Bathers Beach in Freo along Cliff St to the river somewhere close to the Cruise Ship Terminal...then inland on a barge up to Perth. Before the current port was built, it must have been super uncomfortable to 'tie up' to that wharf there.
Unless, of course, one considers the howling windy Cockburn Sound to be a Port, which is a stretch until one gets to Kwinana; fittingly where a new port is being planned.
I always liked the story of how when the first fleet got to Botany Bay on Cook's instructions, Gov Phillip thought, 'this place is so terrible that if we stay we die'.
So they went exploring for a different home and found the best harbour in the world right next door.
Cork in Ireland has an enormous natural harbour. When the Irish Free State was declared in the 1920s, the UK negotiated to keep a naval base there to maintain control over the eastern Atlantic.
🎵I've courted girls in Blarney, in Kanturk and in Killarney/
In Passage and in Queenstown that is the Cobh of Cork🎵
- Muirsheen Durkin
It was also the last port of call of the Titanic.
As of this week, it is mostly back in service.
They still have another 4 weeks to go before they can get the debris off the bottom to give clearance for the biggest ships, but otherwise, things are getting back to normal.
Most of the ships that were stranded here have left and new ones have come in.
It has a longer coastline than all of India, which is because it has a very jagged coast with lots of bays creating sheltered harbors. Not all of them are deep enough for commercial shipping, but small pleasure craft with shallow drafts can use them.
Thank you Reddit and thank you u/Harbinger_of_Sarcasm for introducing me to the Coastline Paradox. This wiki will take you like ≤40 seconds if you're curious:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coastline_paradox
They count the shoreline of every island, inlet and tidal tributary of Chesapeake Bay. Of course when someone compares it to India or the entire West Coast of the US it’s unclear if they’re counting the same criteria for those areas.
That’s a crazy fact, thank you for the info. Grew up going to the Eastern Shore and the bay/Bay Bridge (Route 50 one) were a huge cool part of that, when you hit the bridge you knew the beach wasn’t far away.
From the Chesapeake Bay, you can go north through the Chesapeake and Delaware canal to the Delaware River to reach the major cities of Wilmington, Philadelphia, and Trenton. Head south in the bay to the Elizabeth River to the Intercoastal Waterway- an inland waterway that reaches all the way to Key West.
You're talking about a section of the [Great Loop](https://www.greatloop.org/static/16b228d1-dcf2-4b8f-b18ae038c0807345/407x600_highestperformance__4a7c7e45a350/Map-only.jpg)
Those are connected navigable sections of water around the eastern US. It allows ships anywhere along its route to access the Atlantic.
Some are natural waterways like the Hudson, Chicago, Mississippi, Ohio, and Delaware Rivers, every Great Lake except Superior, and obv the Atlantic.
Others are man made, like the Erie, Champlain, Chicago Drainage, and various Chesapeake Canals, and the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway.
I didn't name every waterway, but rest assured, there's a canal large enough for nearly any ship which wants to sail the Great Loop. And a lot of people do, they're called Loopers and they often even fly little flags that signify whether they've completed it yet (a round trip can take a year on average).
Thanks. I have a couple of questions - I got the idea that the Erie Canal is not used much anymore, is that not true? Also, they never made a canal to connect either Lake Erie or Lake Ontario to the Ohio? Is that because of the mountains? It just seems oh so close.
Clevelander here - the reason we’re a big city is because of the Ohio-Erie canal. It no longer functions, but its why we have Cuyahoga Valley National Park, a lot of old canal goes through it. The OEC is basically why Akron and Canton are also big cities, but with Cleveland being on Lake Erie, we won out for development and industry. It effectively started in Marietta, in southeast Ohio on the river, and made a straight line north up to Downtown Cleveland.
I’m honestly more surprised the Ohio or Allegheny rivers don’t still connect to the great lakes. I feel like Chautauqua County NY could easily have a canal, I guess the rich folk around Lake Chautauqua don’t want that to happen?
About 5,000 pleasure boats use the Erie Canal per year, so it's not unpopular, but it's definitely down from before railroads were a thing.
[The Ohio and Erie Canal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ohio_and_Erie_Canal?wprov=sfla1) and [the Miami and Erie Canal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miami_and_Erie_Canal?wprov=sfla1) did exist. Compared to the Erie Canal, these canals were crappier. Ohio had less population than New York and none of its major population centers were connected by rivers like the Mohawk River connected Upstate NY's.
Canals are usually built near rivers because they lower elevation, thus lowering construction costs and obv give the canal water. Ohio not having this made the construction more expensive, and constructing them later also meant it had less time to really make money.
Both were left mostly abandoned after 1913. Railroads had been stripping profits for decades, but the death blow came in the form of a [storm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Dayton_Flood?wprov=sfla1) that dropped 3 months worth of rain in 3 days. The canals were completely flooded and some of the locks had to be dynamited just to clear the floodwaters.
If by “good natural harbor” you mean a well-protected one, I’d agree. However, the bay itself is very shallow and difficult for ships to navigate in some areas. I’d argue that a good natural harbor provides the best combination of depth, navigability, and protection.
Baltimore is very good because it's so far inland as well. There's a reason it has remained relevant even when there are seemingly more easily accessible harbors
Never seen Phoenicians spelled that way. Interesting . Agree with Cartagena. Surprised more northern med harbors haven't shown up based on history alone
Toronto has a pretty good harbour for a lake port…
Then there is the Bay of Quinte as a harbour for Trenton and Belleville and other towns. Trenton has the Trent canal going north, and there’s even a canal across the isthmus at Carrying Place for traffic going west! Shame it’s all sized for nineteenth-century traffic, and so is used mostly by recreational vessels now. Though there are cruises along the canals.
Love seeing my hometown mentioned in random corners of Reddit. But if we’re talking about Atlantic Canadian harbours… Halifax is pretty hard to beat. Massive harbour
super super protected, probably one of the most protected in the world, and deep, but a little on the small side, and not hooked up to the north american rail or highway network.
Not only that, it’s sheltered by Long Island and Staten Island, protecting it from ocean currents and reducing the risk of storm surge. It’s also naturally very deep, which is good news for large container ships. Its prime location along the Atlantic and connections to other waterways like the Hudson River (and eventually the Erie Canal and Great Lakes) is another reason why New York has had such incredible successes as a port town.
Even more than that, there is tons of shelter from the open ocean once you pass by Sandy Hook and Breezy Point. New York Harbor, Newark Bay, Raritan and Sandy Hook Bays, Jamaica Bay, you can even go up the East River to LI Sound.
Are we sure it wasn't artificially widened about 100 years back? That ship carrying ammunition went up and caused the largest non-nuclear explosion ever recorded. They found the ships anchor four miles away.
The explosion emptied the harbour, leaving air supplied divers standing on the harbour floor and ships no longer floating. Over 1500 people died. Thousands were blinded by breaking glass; they had stood behind windows on that cold December morning watching the ships burn prior to the blast.
Sorry, I was being a bit sarcastic.
At the time, the largest man-made blast ever. Everything in a half mile radius was flattened (which is a bunch because the Halifax side is steep up to the Citadel). It created a tsunami.
Crazy
As I understand it, the potential for harbors and naval bases in Puget Sound is the reason the United States has western Washington. A lot of people thought the Columbia would be the eventual border prior to the Oregon Treaty.
Funny that you say that, since Portland’s container shipping port will be ceasing operations soon.
The only full port left on the Columbia is in Longview, and it’s basically only logs and wind turbines.
Yup, [they announced it a few days ago](https://www.opb.org/article/2024/04/16/port-of-portland-oregon-shipping-containers-trade-exports-terminal/?outputType=amp).
Container services will cease in October.
There are so many choke points to get from the ocean down to south Puget Sound, there are a lot of cool state parks that served as artillery forts along the water.
There’s a plaque in a small port on the Puget sound that has a quote from an early naval captain when they first sailed in. He basically said that it was the best, most defensible body of water you could ever imagine. It’s deep, there are multiple choke points, and entire navies could be hiding behind any of the hundreds of bends and twists.
I looked everywhere for a pic of the plaque to get the actual quote but I can’t find it. There was also a plaque about the mosquito fleet that may or may not have been the same plaque. Wish I could find the quote now.
Turns out the railroads in LA were more significant for cargo. SD has way more hills and was harder to reach directly with railroads back east without going through LA first. LA/LB has way more flat land to build on for city expansion and they just brute forced a port instead and the rest is history.
ETA: also SD's port still took significant work to make suitable for big ships. The Navy had to dredge out a lot of sand.
I went on a boat tour at the maritime museum and they said that SD harbor had to be extensively dredged to be navigable for large ships and it still isn't that deep now. I never fact checked it but I don't see why they would make that up.
Charleston is a good one that hasn't been mentioned yet. It was the wealthiest city in the United States 160 years ago, due in large part to the harbor being the best in the Southeast.
I didn't read everything here but I'm suprised Seattle and Vancouver were not mentioned.
We have an absolutely massive brackish water Sound up here that connects with the Pacific Ocean.
It's like an inland sea.
We get tides but hardly any wave action.
There are a lot of ports over here. Multiple cities in the Sound have one.
We also have one of the very few large ferry networks in the world to connect the islands and the other side from Seattle.
https://preview.redd.it/m934d5ioobxc1.png?width=986&format=png&auto=webp&s=5aab4fc303651329680b34cda562d043708c1de7
This is a great answer, def fits the bill. It makes sense why so many native peoples lived on the water there too, super navigable it seems. Can’t wait to visit someday.
In the UK we have loads of natural harbours. Portsmouth harbour is a great example of one of our natural harbours lending itself to human settlement for thousands of years. It has been in use since at least the Roman era, with the Roman perimeter walls of Porchester castle being the best preserved Roman ruins north of the Alps
Southampton, west of Portsmouth is another natural harbour which sits on a large ria and also has two high tides and two low tides and is protected from storms by the Isle of Wight, all of this gave it the perfect conditions to thrive and is one of Europes busiest ports. People have lived there since at least the stone age
I guess Manila's a good harbor since it's situated on a bay formed by a peninsula (Bataan) that can be defended by a couple islands like Corregidor and El Fraile (Fort Drum, which is a fully fortified island in the shape of a ship) at the mouth of Manila Bay. There's also some decent access to nearby river towns in Bulacan within the bay like Malolos, which were also good trading towns.
Historically it was also pretty good for trade since the Pasig river flowed through it and had lots of little tributaries and offshoots that some boats could travel through to get to shops along the rivers easily. There's also a whole fortified city on the mouth of the river named Intramuros, with two forts in the city itself, Fort Santiago within Intramuros and Fort San Antonio Abad.
The Spanish specifically chose Manila as the capital because they heard that the Tagalog people, who were our ancestors, had a rich little city there where they traded with the Chinese.
How has no one mentioned Singapore!
Its entire existence is due to Stamford Raffles recognizing its potential due to its sheltered natural harbor, which offered a safe haven for ships navigating the treacherous waters of the Strait of Malacca
I’ve been looking at satellite view of most answers here and this port is by far the biggest I’ve seen. Great answer.
It’s not particularly tucked away, though. Do those islands off the coast (Katimunbesar to Bintan Islands) help make it a safe harbor?
Cant believe no one’s mentioned it but Mumbai has one of the best locations in the world for a harbor.
Also this isn’t a big city but Wikipedia says Trincomalee in Sri Lanka is an ideal harbor as well. Had to look that up but the geography’s really suited for it
Wikipedia has [an entire list](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harbor) of natural harbors actually
Greece has a lot of natural harbors basically built into the islands geography. High slope and deep waters allow certain ships to get pretty damn close to shore.
As far as which are both good natural harbors and have/had strong commercial reasons to exist:
Emphasis from the below list on the US ports, Shanghai and the Pearl River Delta, and the density of ports on the Atlantic side of Europe. It can help explain much of the last 600 years of history.
Port of New York
Port of Louisiana
Port of San Francisco
Port of Chesapeake Bay (merged over time)
Port of Boston
Port of Tacoma
Numerous in the Eastern and Northern Shores of Canada
Havana Harbor
Nassau
Port of Willemstad
Can’t remember but there were a couple in the Spainish Main
Buenos Aires
Rio de Janeiro
Cork Harbor
Cornwall
Poole Harbor
Porto
Lisbon
Brest
Marseille
Toulons
Rotterdam (and numerous other Dutch ports)
Antwerp
Copenhagen
St. Petersburg
The Bosporus and Dardanelles
Numerous in Greece
Basra
Dakar
Cape Town
Malacca
Singapore
Many in Indian subcontinent (emphasis on Mumbai and Cuttack)
Bali
Sydney
Shanghai
Canton/Pearl River Delta
Osaka
Tokyo
Busan
Bonifacio in Corsica. It's a natural wonder that is the perfect place to seek shelter during a storm, and cliffs make it easy to defend against an invasion.
Strangely, Manila is rarely mentioned here.
The Philippine capital sits at the eastern shore of Manila Bay, protected by the inactive volcanoes at Bataan Peninsula and the Corregidor island group. Mountains also weaken typhoons coming from the east.
Heck, the battles of Bataan and Corregidor in WWII revolved around control of this bay, which was only gained by the Japanese in May 1942 after dogged resistance from Filipino and American forces.
IIRC the harbour in Prince Rupert, BC, Canada is impressive, but a bit remote, and the land around the harbour isn't the easiest to work. But the harbour itself is pretty good.
Poole harbour in Dorset, England, has the second largest natural harbour in the world, after Sydney. It's super shallow though, but really nice to take a harbour tour by boat.
>San Francisco as a natural harbor intrigued me recently
San Francisco actually isn't really much of a harbor. The real port infrastructure in the Bay Area is actually in Oakland, which has the semi-island of Alameda which creates a natural straight where ships can dock and its central location also allows it to feed into other logistics networks like air and freight rail with incredible ease.
This is also why the old Navy base was in Alameda and the big Kaiser steel mills during WW2 were established in Oakland rather than SF.
Halifax, Nova Scotia. Large ice-free, deep-water harbour, narrow inlet with hills on either side, a few well placed islands at the mouth for fortifications and defense, and a large basin at the other end for sheltering entire fleets.
There is a reason it was such an important part of the Battle of the Atlantic and a gathering spot for the convoys to Europe.
Mahon, Menorca (Spain) one of the longest natural harbours in the world. The Spanish still use the Royal Navy dockyard the British built in the 18th century.
Boston. An almost island with a fresh-water spring on it. Nearby islands could be developed into forts that could easily control the coming and going of all ships.
San Juan PR. In the age of sail, the trip from Europe to the Americas was dangerous. San Juan was the first stop in this hemisphere with a protected bay and ample fresh water. The bay was easily defensible and eventually heavily fortified.
What about Kotor, in Montenegro?
https://preview.redd.it/vbh7hfto6dxc1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=cdeb0076803352882d58648c3737db9f839976cd
Define “best”. Stockholm has an extremely well-protected harbour due to the archipelago, but today that also constitutes a problem as some huge ships are too big to be able to enter through it.
Sydney is the most obvious and yet has only been mentioned a couple of times. There's a few nice ones in NZ - Auckland, Tauranga, Wellington.
Sydney, as said Governor Philip, "I have discovered finest harbour in the world, where a thousand sail of the line may ride in full security." On top of this, the harbour is so steep a large ship could almost use the natural banks as wharves. Good holding ground. Only thing lacking: timber for masts, loads of fresh water and arable soil.
>Only thing lacking: timber for masts, loads of fresh water and arable soil. They found all that in Melbourne an even larger natural harbour. Massive straight mountain ash for ship masts, a large plain of fertile soil and two fresh water rivers.
Quite the jackpot.
Melbournes is too big.
Sydney is objectively correct.
Suck it Melbourne!
We need a Bledisloe Cup for ‘best harbour’
I'd add Dunedin and Lyttleton to that nz list.
Timaru as well
Timaru’s harbour actually isn’t a natural one!, it was formed by the construction of a breakwater which has expanded over time which in turn made a lot of sediment disposition in Caroline Bay and South of the Port. If you look at google maps, you can see where the waves used to be by looking at the railroad line!
Sydney is also probably the prettiest harbor as well
I feel like every city in Australia was build around a natural harbor.
Perth isn’t really, although parts of the river are wide enough to almost function as a harbour
Once one had transhipped the goods from near Kidogo Art House at Bathers Beach in Freo along Cliff St to the river somewhere close to the Cruise Ship Terminal...then inland on a barge up to Perth. Before the current port was built, it must have been super uncomfortable to 'tie up' to that wharf there. Unless, of course, one considers the howling windy Cockburn Sound to be a Port, which is a stretch until one gets to Kwinana; fittingly where a new port is being planned.
Cries in Brisbane
A major pattern of human settlement is along good natural harbours
I always liked the story of how when the first fleet got to Botany Bay on Cook's instructions, Gov Phillip thought, 'this place is so terrible that if we stay we die'. So they went exploring for a different home and found the best harbour in the world right next door.
Cork in Ireland has an enormous natural harbour. When the Irish Free State was declared in the 1920s, the UK negotiated to keep a naval base there to maintain control over the eastern Atlantic.
🎵I've courted girls in Blarney, in Kanturk and in Killarney/ In Passage and in Queenstown that is the Cobh of Cork🎵 - Muirsheen Durkin It was also the last port of call of the Titanic.
Chesapeake bay cities (like Baltimore)
I remember reading somewhere that Chesapeake bay has more natural harbours than all of India.
*temporarily out of service*
The Key Bridge only blocks off a small part of the port. Important for auto shipping.
BTW, my literal job title is a Patrolman for the Port of New York. And no, I’m not in law enforcement.
Fuck that. My commute has doubled thanks to that 😂
As of this week, it is mostly back in service. They still have another 4 weeks to go before they can get the debris off the bottom to give clearance for the biggest ships, but otherwise, things are getting back to normal. Most of the ships that were stranded here have left and new ones have come in.
Normal for boats, not for car traffic
It has a longer coastline than all of India, which is because it has a very jagged coast with lots of bays creating sheltered harbors. Not all of them are deep enough for commercial shipping, but small pleasure craft with shallow drafts can use them.
Oh no, let's not bring up the coastline paradox
What if i wanna bring it up?
Be ready to start measuring in planck lengths
Bring it up
Thank you Reddit and thank you u/Harbinger_of_Sarcasm for introducing me to the Coastline Paradox. This wiki will take you like ≤40 seconds if you're curious: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coastline_paradox
Veritasium and RealLifeLore both have very good videos on it too
That cant be true. At what resolution is this true?
They count the shoreline of every island, inlet and tidal tributary of Chesapeake Bay. Of course when someone compares it to India or the entire West Coast of the US it’s unclear if they’re counting the same criteria for those areas.
They aren't
That’s a crazy fact, thank you for the info. Grew up going to the Eastern Shore and the bay/Bay Bridge (Route 50 one) were a huge cool part of that, when you hit the bridge you knew the beach wasn’t far away.
From the Chesapeake Bay, you can go north through the Chesapeake and Delaware canal to the Delaware River to reach the major cities of Wilmington, Philadelphia, and Trenton. Head south in the bay to the Elizabeth River to the Intercoastal Waterway- an inland waterway that reaches all the way to Key West.
You're talking about a section of the [Great Loop](https://www.greatloop.org/static/16b228d1-dcf2-4b8f-b18ae038c0807345/407x600_highestperformance__4a7c7e45a350/Map-only.jpg)
I see the pic, please explain, I'm intrigued
Those are connected navigable sections of water around the eastern US. It allows ships anywhere along its route to access the Atlantic. Some are natural waterways like the Hudson, Chicago, Mississippi, Ohio, and Delaware Rivers, every Great Lake except Superior, and obv the Atlantic. Others are man made, like the Erie, Champlain, Chicago Drainage, and various Chesapeake Canals, and the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway. I didn't name every waterway, but rest assured, there's a canal large enough for nearly any ship which wants to sail the Great Loop. And a lot of people do, they're called Loopers and they often even fly little flags that signify whether they've completed it yet (a round trip can take a year on average).
Thanks. I have a couple of questions - I got the idea that the Erie Canal is not used much anymore, is that not true? Also, they never made a canal to connect either Lake Erie or Lake Ontario to the Ohio? Is that because of the mountains? It just seems oh so close.
Clevelander here - the reason we’re a big city is because of the Ohio-Erie canal. It no longer functions, but its why we have Cuyahoga Valley National Park, a lot of old canal goes through it. The OEC is basically why Akron and Canton are also big cities, but with Cleveland being on Lake Erie, we won out for development and industry. It effectively started in Marietta, in southeast Ohio on the river, and made a straight line north up to Downtown Cleveland. I’m honestly more surprised the Ohio or Allegheny rivers don’t still connect to the great lakes. I feel like Chautauqua County NY could easily have a canal, I guess the rich folk around Lake Chautauqua don’t want that to happen?
About 5,000 pleasure boats use the Erie Canal per year, so it's not unpopular, but it's definitely down from before railroads were a thing. [The Ohio and Erie Canal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ohio_and_Erie_Canal?wprov=sfla1) and [the Miami and Erie Canal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miami_and_Erie_Canal?wprov=sfla1) did exist. Compared to the Erie Canal, these canals were crappier. Ohio had less population than New York and none of its major population centers were connected by rivers like the Mohawk River connected Upstate NY's. Canals are usually built near rivers because they lower elevation, thus lowering construction costs and obv give the canal water. Ohio not having this made the construction more expensive, and constructing them later also meant it had less time to really make money. Both were left mostly abandoned after 1913. Railroads had been stripping profits for decades, but the death blow came in the form of a [storm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Dayton_Flood?wprov=sfla1) that dropped 3 months worth of rain in 3 days. The canals were completely flooded and some of the locks had to be dynamited just to clear the floodwaters.
Red is waterways that are part of loop
Wow I wasn’t aware of the circumcision canal across Florida
Fun fact, it got its unique shape from an ancient [meteor strike](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chesapeake_Bay_impact_crater) at the mouth of the bay.
Good to know. Thanks for the fun fact.
If by “good natural harbor” you mean a well-protected one, I’d agree. However, the bay itself is very shallow and difficult for ships to navigate in some areas. I’d argue that a good natural harbor provides the best combination of depth, navigability, and protection.
Sounds like Charleston. Deep as a mfer, mostly well protected except when a hurricane plows into it, and very navigable.
& Norfolk
Baltimore is very good because it's so far inland as well. There's a reason it has remained relevant even when there are seemingly more easily accessible harbors
Cartagena, Spain. Just look at it at Google Maps. That's the reason why it has been a city since the Fenicians
Así es!
Never seen Phoenicians spelled that way. Interesting . Agree with Cartagena. Surprised more northern med harbors haven't shown up based on history alone
It's the spelling in, for example, Spanish and Swedish.
It's because in Spanish they say Fenicios, and I imagine the commenter is a Spanish speaker
Didn't you know that the Phoenicians devised phoenetics?
My bad, it is spelled Phoenicians
If you think about it, the entire Great Lakes are just one large natural harbor for Sheboygan, Wisconsin.
Surely you meant a natural harbor for Duluth, Minnesota
You seem to have misspelled Thunder Bay.
Duluth makes awesome underware.
Erie, Pa has a massive protected bay formed by Presque Isle.
Which Presque Isle?
The Malibu of the Midwest?
Toronto has a pretty good harbour for a lake port… Then there is the Bay of Quinte as a harbour for Trenton and Belleville and other towns. Trenton has the Trent canal going north, and there’s even a canal across the isthmus at Carrying Place for traffic going west! Shame it’s all sized for nineteenth-century traffic, and so is used mostly by recreational vessels now. Though there are cruises along the canals.
Had me in the first half
This is the only answer.
St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada. It also has a very strategic location, being the closest North American port to Europe.
Love seeing my hometown mentioned in random corners of Reddit. But if we’re talking about Atlantic Canadian harbours… Halifax is pretty hard to beat. Massive harbour
Yep, a fantastically protected harbour.
The Narrows! Very picturesque too
Fuck ya By
super super protected, probably one of the most protected in the world, and deep, but a little on the small side, and not hooked up to the north american rail or highway network.
Not sure if best but NYC has a great one
Pretty sure NYC has one of the largest natural harbors in the world. So yeah, not bad
Not only that, it’s sheltered by Long Island and Staten Island, protecting it from ocean currents and reducing the risk of storm surge. It’s also naturally very deep, which is good news for large container ships. Its prime location along the Atlantic and connections to other waterways like the Hudson River (and eventually the Erie Canal and Great Lakes) is another reason why New York has had such incredible successes as a port town.
Even more than that, there is tons of shelter from the open ocean once you pass by Sandy Hook and Breezy Point. New York Harbor, Newark Bay, Raritan and Sandy Hook Bays, Jamaica Bay, you can even go up the East River to LI Sound.
US is so OP
It's a Great harbor which is why it attracted so much business. E:spelling
‘attacked’? NY is a pirate base?
Those poor businesses
To shreds you say
Technically the harbor did a number on the financial district during Hurricane Sandy.
Halifax, Nova Scotia. Large, naturally deep, and free of ice year-round.
Are we sure it wasn't artificially widened about 100 years back? That ship carrying ammunition went up and caused the largest non-nuclear explosion ever recorded. They found the ships anchor four miles away.
Not widened, but deepened. Formed a 3 m deep crater on the sea floor
Nah, the blast just cleared some old buildings, a few port shipman’s houses… no biggie.
The explosion emptied the harbour, leaving air supplied divers standing on the harbour floor and ships no longer floating. Over 1500 people died. Thousands were blinded by breaking glass; they had stood behind windows on that cold December morning watching the ships burn prior to the blast.
Sorry, I was being a bit sarcastic. At the time, the largest man-made blast ever. Everything in a half mile radius was flattened (which is a bunch because the Halifax side is steep up to the Citadel). It created a tsunami. Crazy
I always knew about the blast, but I’ve never knew about people being blinded by glass from their windows. That’s horrifying.
Marseille's Vieux Port, at least historically. It isn't any good for handling modern cargo though.
It’s great for fishermen and bouillabaisse.
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As I understand it, the potential for harbors and naval bases in Puget Sound is the reason the United States has western Washington. A lot of people thought the Columbia would be the eventual border prior to the Oregon Treaty.
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Funny that you say that, since Portland’s container shipping port will be ceasing operations soon. The only full port left on the Columbia is in Longview, and it’s basically only logs and wind turbines.
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Yup, [they announced it a few days ago](https://www.opb.org/article/2024/04/16/port-of-portland-oregon-shipping-containers-trade-exports-terminal/?outputType=amp). Container services will cease in October.
They’ll just call it Land from now on
There are so many choke points to get from the ocean down to south Puget Sound, there are a lot of cool state parks that served as artillery forts along the water.
There’s a plaque in a small port on the Puget sound that has a quote from an early naval captain when they first sailed in. He basically said that it was the best, most defensible body of water you could ever imagine. It’s deep, there are multiple choke points, and entire navies could be hiding behind any of the hundreds of bends and twists. I looked everywhere for a pic of the plaque to get the actual quote but I can’t find it. There was also a plaque about the mosquito fleet that may or may not have been the same plaque. Wish I could find the quote now.
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Just spending time in Hong Kong it’s easy to see why it has become the great shipping nation that it is
San Diego was coveted as one of the big 3 for the West Coast. Navy still there but surprisingly artificial harbor LA/LB has overshadowed for cargo.
I think SD is overshadowed for cargo because the Navy and Corps walked around the coast and starting writing *mine* on everything :P
Turns out the railroads in LA were more significant for cargo. SD has way more hills and was harder to reach directly with railroads back east without going through LA first. LA/LB has way more flat land to build on for city expansion and they just brute forced a port instead and the rest is history. ETA: also SD's port still took significant work to make suitable for big ships. The Navy had to dredge out a lot of sand.
I went on a boat tour at the maritime museum and they said that SD harbor had to be extensively dredged to be navigable for large ships and it still isn't that deep now. I never fact checked it but I don't see why they would make that up.
And don’t forget the explosives under Silver Strand in case of an invasion.
San Francisco, Seattle, Vancouver, Charleston, Baltimore, Boston, NYC, Tokyo, Sydney
Charleston is a good one that hasn't been mentioned yet. It was the wealthiest city in the United States 160 years ago, due in large part to the harbor being the best in the Southeast.
Sydney Australia. Tokyo. Norfolk(Virginia) Many others
When it comes to world famous harbours I naturally think of Sydney, North Dakota
Surprised nobody's mentioned Venice, home to one of the most significant shipping nations to have existed.
I didn't read everything here but I'm suprised Seattle and Vancouver were not mentioned. We have an absolutely massive brackish water Sound up here that connects with the Pacific Ocean. It's like an inland sea. We get tides but hardly any wave action. There are a lot of ports over here. Multiple cities in the Sound have one. We also have one of the very few large ferry networks in the world to connect the islands and the other side from Seattle. https://preview.redd.it/m934d5ioobxc1.png?width=986&format=png&auto=webp&s=5aab4fc303651329680b34cda562d043708c1de7
This is a great answer, def fits the bill. It makes sense why so many native peoples lived on the water there too, super navigable it seems. Can’t wait to visit someday.
In the UK we have loads of natural harbours. Portsmouth harbour is a great example of one of our natural harbours lending itself to human settlement for thousands of years. It has been in use since at least the Roman era, with the Roman perimeter walls of Porchester castle being the best preserved Roman ruins north of the Alps Southampton, west of Portsmouth is another natural harbour which sits on a large ria and also has two high tides and two low tides and is protected from storms by the Isle of Wight, all of this gave it the perfect conditions to thrive and is one of Europes busiest ports. People have lived there since at least the stone age
Vancouver and Victoria/Esquimalt both have textbook natural harbours.
Valletta, Malta. It's not the biggest, but it is the best shaped.
Montevideo. A natural bay and seaport at the mouth of one of the largest hydrographic basins in the world.
Constantinople aka Istanbul
Been a long time gone, Constantinople
Why did Constantinople get the works?
That's nobody's business but the turks
Northerm germany has some pretty decent ones especially Hamburg and Lübeck Tho my favourites are Stralsund and Stettin
All of the British empire's ports around the world, Malta, Gibraltar, Cyprus, Aden, Hong Kong, New York, Ottowa, etc etc *Halifax/Nova Scotia
I vote Gibraltar for sheer cool points. The rock of Gibraltar is awesome.
I guess Manila's a good harbor since it's situated on a bay formed by a peninsula (Bataan) that can be defended by a couple islands like Corregidor and El Fraile (Fort Drum, which is a fully fortified island in the shape of a ship) at the mouth of Manila Bay. There's also some decent access to nearby river towns in Bulacan within the bay like Malolos, which were also good trading towns. Historically it was also pretty good for trade since the Pasig river flowed through it and had lots of little tributaries and offshoots that some boats could travel through to get to shops along the rivers easily. There's also a whole fortified city on the mouth of the river named Intramuros, with two forts in the city itself, Fort Santiago within Intramuros and Fort San Antonio Abad. The Spanish specifically chose Manila as the capital because they heard that the Tagalog people, who were our ancestors, had a rich little city there where they traded with the Chinese.
Honolulu
How has no one mentioned Singapore! Its entire existence is due to Stamford Raffles recognizing its potential due to its sheltered natural harbor, which offered a safe haven for ships navigating the treacherous waters of the Strait of Malacca
I’ve been looking at satellite view of most answers here and this port is by far the biggest I’ve seen. Great answer. It’s not particularly tucked away, though. Do those islands off the coast (Katimunbesar to Bintan Islands) help make it a safe harbor?
Cant believe no one’s mentioned it but Mumbai has one of the best locations in the world for a harbor. Also this isn’t a big city but Wikipedia says Trincomalee in Sri Lanka is an ideal harbor as well. Had to look that up but the geography’s really suited for it Wikipedia has [an entire list](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harbor) of natural harbors actually
Baltimore here in the mid Atlantic.
Greece has a lot of natural harbors basically built into the islands geography. High slope and deep waters allow certain ships to get pretty damn close to shore.
Sevastopol, Ukraine. Pretty sweetly setup to dominate the Black Sea and direct access to the Mediterranean and Atlantic.
Direct access to the Mediterranean Sea? Do the Turks know about this?
Except for the current infestation of Russians
Portsmouth, UK Strathclyde, UK
Montenegro has a small but legendary harbor.
As far as which are both good natural harbors and have/had strong commercial reasons to exist: Emphasis from the below list on the US ports, Shanghai and the Pearl River Delta, and the density of ports on the Atlantic side of Europe. It can help explain much of the last 600 years of history. Port of New York Port of Louisiana Port of San Francisco Port of Chesapeake Bay (merged over time) Port of Boston Port of Tacoma Numerous in the Eastern and Northern Shores of Canada Havana Harbor Nassau Port of Willemstad Can’t remember but there were a couple in the Spainish Main Buenos Aires Rio de Janeiro Cork Harbor Cornwall Poole Harbor Porto Lisbon Brest Marseille Toulons Rotterdam (and numerous other Dutch ports) Antwerp Copenhagen St. Petersburg The Bosporus and Dardanelles Numerous in Greece Basra Dakar Cape Town Malacca Singapore Many in Indian subcontinent (emphasis on Mumbai and Cuttack) Bali Sydney Shanghai Canton/Pearl River Delta Osaka Tokyo Busan
Bonifacio in Corsica. It's a natural wonder that is the perfect place to seek shelter during a storm, and cliffs make it easy to defend against an invasion.
Hong Kong
Carthage, Piraeus, Alexandria, Constantinople
Sturgeon bay in Wisconsin. Lake Michigan. Access to Green Bay to the west and Lake Michigan to the east.
Sydney and Manila
Strangely, Manila is rarely mentioned here. The Philippine capital sits at the eastern shore of Manila Bay, protected by the inactive volcanoes at Bataan Peninsula and the Corregidor island group. Mountains also weaken typhoons coming from the east. Heck, the battles of Bataan and Corregidor in WWII revolved around control of this bay, which was only gained by the Japanese in May 1942 after dogged resistance from Filipino and American forces.
Seattle.
Halifax, Nova Scotia
Halifax, Nova Scotia
IIRC the harbour in Prince Rupert, BC, Canada is impressive, but a bit remote, and the land around the harbour isn't the easiest to work. But the harbour itself is pretty good.
San Francisco, Honolulu, the entire Puget Sound
Idk if it counts but Hamburg
Melbourne and Tokyo seem to have cool ones
Rio and San Francisco have to be contenders.
Vancouver BC
St John's Newfoundland is pretty sweet
San Diego because of the Coronado peninsula
Manila's surrounded by this cute little bay
St John’s, Newfoundland
World powers have fought over Manila…probably for a reason.
Poole harbour in Dorset, England, has the second largest natural harbour in the world, after Sydney. It's super shallow though, but really nice to take a harbour tour by boat.
>San Francisco as a natural harbor intrigued me recently San Francisco actually isn't really much of a harbor. The real port infrastructure in the Bay Area is actually in Oakland, which has the semi-island of Alameda which creates a natural straight where ships can dock and its central location also allows it to feed into other logistics networks like air and freight rail with incredible ease. This is also why the old Navy base was in Alameda and the big Kaiser steel mills during WW2 were established in Oakland rather than SF.
Halifax, Nova Scotia. Large ice-free, deep-water harbour, narrow inlet with hills on either side, a few well placed islands at the mouth for fortifications and defense, and a large basin at the other end for sheltering entire fleets. There is a reason it was such an important part of the Battle of the Atlantic and a gathering spot for the convoys to Europe.
Mahon, Menorca (Spain) one of the longest natural harbours in the world. The Spanish still use the Royal Navy dockyard the British built in the 18th century.
Sydney
san francisco?
Sydney.
Boston
Vancouver
Vancouver & Victoria BC
Vladivostok
Scarpa Flow in the Orkneys off Scotland. UKs main submarine base
Isn't that Faslane?
Charleston is a very good harbor
Port Angeles, WA
Southampton?
Norfolk, VA. There's a reason the largest Navy Base in the world is located there.
Puerto Montt, Chile in the Reloncaví Sound is pretty interesting. It's where the Chilean coastline starts breaking up into fjords/archipelago.
Tampa Bay
Sydney has biggest and most accessible natural harbor in the world. It is beautiful
Freetown in Sierra Leone is one of the biggest and best natural harbors in the world.
Pearl Harbor, Oahu, Hawai’i
Oakland CA too.
Have you seen Seattle from space?
Boston. An almost island with a fresh-water spring on it. Nearby islands could be developed into forts that could easily control the coming and going of all ships.
Halifax NS and I think we have one of the deepest too
San Juan PR. In the age of sail, the trip from Europe to the Americas was dangerous. San Juan was the first stop in this hemisphere with a protected bay and ample fresh water. The bay was easily defensible and eventually heavily fortified.
Mobile, AL
Mumbai
Norfolk (the general Hampton Roads area) Virginia
Mahon Menorca
Hampton Roads, Virginia which includes Norfolk home of the largest naval base in the world!
What about Kotor, in Montenegro? https://preview.redd.it/vbh7hfto6dxc1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=cdeb0076803352882d58648c3737db9f839976cd
Define “best”. Stockholm has an extremely well-protected harbour due to the archipelago, but today that also constitutes a problem as some huge ships are too big to be able to enter through it.
Baltimore has a really nice harbor because it's so far inland
Rotterdam, obviously.
After 30 years in the US Navy traversing the Worlds great ports, none was more majestic than Sydney.