Port city

“ In nothing that we have said do we mean to be understood as affirming that a city can, by ordinance or otherwise, charge or collect wharfage for merely entering its port, or stopping therein, or for the use of that which is not a wharf, but merely the natural and unimproved shore of a navigable river. ”

“ No wonder the American people are proud of "the Queen City of the West." It stands far inland, a thousand miles from the ocean, and yet it is an important port on the shores of Lake Michigan, and steamers from London can land their cargoes at its quays. More than twenty thousand vessels enter and leave the port in one year. It is the greatest grain and provision market in the world. ”

“ Here then I am in New York—the Empire City of America—the greatest commercial port in the American Continent and the World. Its [Pg 87] tonnage is larger than that of any other Port city I believe in the World. While it is connected by the Ocean with all Foreign Countries, it is likewise so with all the important cities of the United States by railroads and steamboat conveyance. ”

“ You can get your roots here, you can feel you are real.
"You see what my father is doing is to take this whole harbor and study it hard—not just the water, the shipping and docks, for when he says 'the port of New York' he means all the railroads too—and he's studying [Pg 145] how they all come in and why it is that everything has become so frightfully snarled. A lot of big shipping men are behind him, and he's to draw up a plan for it all which they're going to give to the city to use, to make this port what it's got to be, the very first in the ocean world. ”

“ From the harbour, filled with shipping, the ground rises all round to a height of 500 or 600 feet in steep slopes, upon which the city is built; a line of warehouses or other great white buildings, connected no doubt for the most part, if not altogether, with the trade of the port, forms the front rank, and gives an imposing facing to the whole. ”

“ Port Said was made out of nothing, and it is pretty good. A town of eight to ten thousand inhabitants, with docks, quays, squares, streets, shops, mosques, hospitals, public buildings; in front of our hotel is a garden and public square; all this fed by the iron pipe and the pump at Ismailia—without this there is no fresh water nearer than Damietta. It is a shabby city, and just now has the over-done appearance of one of our own western town inflations. ”

“ The city is now in the harbor of a great port, and all the merchantmen who live nearest to this port have been informed that the vehicle city would arrive about midweek and remain four days. What a busy time follows after the floating city is fastened to its moorings! Inhabitants go on solid ground to do their trading. Dealers make large purchases and place extensive orders.
It should be stated that the mail and telegraph systems between the continents and all these floating cities are well nigh perfect. ”

“ In spite of the fact that vessels find it hard to ride at anchor near Hilton Head during a storm, every effort is to be made to stimulate on its site the growth of a city. A newspaper is already published, which dilates on the magnificence of its future, and rebukes everybody who doesn’t call the place Port Royal (the name generally given to the great sheet of water constituting at once its harbor, that of Bay Point, and of one or two other places farther in) , rather than Hilton Head. ”

“ A perfect forest of masts lines the wharves, representing every kind of craft, and almost every nation that sails the seas. Twice a week European steamships leave from the foot of Canal street; while from various points along the wharves, indicated by handsome ferry or shipping houses, boats go and come, to and from every port on the river or on the Atlantic coast. At Desbrosses and Cortlandt streets ferries connect with Jersey City. South, Wall and Fulton ferries give access to Brooklyn; while other ferries convey passengers to other points on the rivers and bay. ”

“ A company has undertaken port works which will greatly advance the prosperity of City and State, the works to include three breakwaters and two quay walls, the levelling of a large wharf space, erection of store-houses, laying railway lines, installing electric cranes, and constructing a floating dock and a lighthouse. ”

“ To ferry across the river to Birkenhead and Bootle, and down to New Brighton and other popular resorts, is an excellent way to appreciate the greatness of this famous port. As a city it has little charm, except in its surroundings. ”

“ Old Port Royal formerly extended northward from the point at the left. of the city of Kingston, ran along the water front encircling the harbor, and continued along the line of the Palisadoes, reaching its greatest destructive effect at Port Royal. ”

“ This gave me a good opportunity of comparing the San Francisco of 1852 with that of 1853. As before stated, there had been but one wharf in front of the city in 1852—Long Wharf. In 1853 the town had grown out into the bay beyond what was the end of this wharf when I first saw it. Streets and houses had been built out on piles where the year before the largest vessels visiting the port lay at anchor or tied to the wharf. There was no filling under the streets or houses. San Francisco presented the same general appearance as the year before; ”

“ It was a gay scene by the quay, where native coasting ships were unloading their queer cargoes. Dark-faced porters in rags carried on their shoulders enormous burdens; men in loose knickerbockers, embroidered shirts, and funny little turbans lounged about, and stared at us as if they were every-day people and we extraordinary. And the setting for the lively picture was the deeply-indented bay, surrounded with quaintly pretty houses among vineyards and olive groves, which climbed terrace after terrace to a mountainous horse-shoe, hemming in the port. ”

“ Here, in miniature, are all the indications of a world-port. It is a picturesque waterside town, the tall chimneys of its factories, the masts and funnels of the ships at its quays, and the tall spars of the lateen-rigged “tartanes,” all producing a wonderfully serrated sky-line of the kind loved by artists; but, oh! so difficult for them to reproduce satisfactorily. Besides these features there is also the near-by fort and the lighthouse which gleams forth a sailor’s warning a dozen miles out to sea. ”

“ The sea-breeze, with which the shore had been refreshed for twenty minutes, had not as yet found its way into the recesses of the inner harbour, which, take it all in all, is one of the snuggest and most beautiful coves in the world. And such is the commodious nature of this admirable port, that even the Illustrious, though a large 74-gun ship, rode at anchor in perfect security, within a very few yards of the beach, which at that spot is quite steep to, and is wooded down to, the very edge of the water. ”

“ While London, Liverpool, Hamburg, Antwerp, Hong-kong, and Marseilles have had eyes for New York alone in this Western World, while the ports of ancient and historic renown have been struggling among themselves for supremacy, away up at the end of the Lake Superior wilderness the second greatest freight-shipping port in the world was building itself, quietly, unobtrusively, unknown. ”

“ The town now possesses an exchange, a large theatre, a gymnasium, a naval school, municipal buildings and several hospitals and charitable institutions erected by private munificence. The harbour, in which ships of all nations may be seen, as well as great numbers of the picturesque sailing craft engaged in the coasting trade, is somewhat difficult of access to larger vessels, but has been improved by the construction of new breakwaters and dry docks. The port and the capital are now connected by railway with Corinth and the principal towns of the Morea ”

“ The docks and quays are busy with their craft and shipping, upon the beautiful borders of the Lough;—the large red warehouses stretching along the shores, with ships loading, or unloading, or building, hammers clanging, pitch-pots flaming and boiling, seamen cheering in the ships, or lolling lazily on the shore. The life and movement of a port here give the stranger plenty to admire and observe. ”

“ Port Said, where we have landed, is a large town with a big business, yet it is built on a site which a comparatively short time ago was nothing but a marshy salt lake. Men of all nations walk in its streets, and ships of all [Pg 53] nations pass through its port. ”

“ How different was the Port Royal of olden days—a flourishing, noisy, hustling town of several thousand houses, of thousands of inhabitants, of great warehouses filled almost to bursting, of busy shipyards and a “hard” whereon always a dozen vessels might be seen careened; a port before which scores of armed ships rode ever at anchor; a place whose people were as familiar with the Jolly Roger as with the British ensign; and withal the notorious rendezvous of the English buccaneers. ”

“ Its only harbour, a small basin dug out of the rock, was rarely enlivened by anything that could aspire to the title of shipping; for in Cromwell's time, about twenty tons of boat-freight was all that its diminutive port could lay claim to. The spirit of its inhabitants, however, with an accurate perception of the natural advantages of the Port, and aided by government in the preparation for a new era in commercial enterprise, has achieved wonders. An air of prosperity animates the whole town: the harbour is filled with goodly traders ”

“ In vain you look in the Tagus for that forest of shipping which should fringe the watery highway to, and ought to constitute the leading feature in, so fine a port—the capital of a country the once nautical genius of whose people is expressed in the only poem in any language that makes adventures on the deep its theme. ”

“ Even the little launches from which the port authorities board you as you lie in the harbour are not quite like the launches seen elsewhere, and though the great stone pier, to which at last you are warped in, might of itself fit the picture of a British seaport, the women and children waiting on the pier, trotting along beside the ship as she moves slowly to her berth, waving and smiling up at friends on deck, are costumed in inevitable suggestion of great brilliant flower-gardens agitated by the wind. ”

“ The harbour is not large, but is safe and deep, being completely shut in by hills. A large quay, pier, warehouses, &c., facilitate the handling of cargoes, which were previously transported to and from the anchorage by lighters. Victoria is a port of call for coasting steamers and a shipping port in the coffee trade. ”

“ This committee is more convinced than ever that if Port- land is to be a great commercial seaport, if the interior is to receive the benefits of reasonable rates, and to reach its proper development, it will be brought about only through a deep and safe channel to the sea and the opening to navigation of the waterways of the Northwest. ”

“ Large seaports are always interesting towns, and Havre, besides the usual attractions of such places, has a sort of shop in greater perfection than any other port known to me. In these you can buy or inspect curiosities, alive and dead, from all parts of the world. ”

“ The Port o’ Missing Men is like the Port of San Francisco, and these men are like boats in from a foreign port, tramp steamers some of them, out of nowhere, going nowhere, no baggage, no traditions, men who’ll never get lost because they are on their way to Nowhere. ”

“ PARIS: The captain advised us to remain on deck while the ship was entering the harbor at Havre, and we were repaid for the midnight vigil by the brilliancy of the scene. The port itself is narrow, but the effect of space is given by the numerous basins and the canal, filled with craft and sails of every description. The splendid masonry stands out strong and beautiful under the multitude of electric lights which line the shore on either side. ”

“ The present authorities of the really attractive little town are doing their best to keep pace with the march of progress, and there are hotels, more or less grand, electric lights, and tram-cars.
The little port is exceedingly picturesque, and its quays are always animated with the comings and goings of a hundred or more fishing-boats, which of themselves smack nothing of modernity. The motor-boat has not yet taken the picturesqueness out of the life of these hardy fishermen of yore, though it is slowly making its way in some parts. ”

“ The breakwater is crowded with citizens taking the air, for the walks of Port Said are restricted and flavored with the odors of Arabian domesticity. We pass on, and the hotels and custom-house buildings come into view. All around are the transients of the ocean, anchored and for a moment at rest. ”

“ The Port of London commences at London Bridge. The forest of masts which rises in direct view—thickening in perspective till it is lost in the distance—announces the vast extent of that Commerce which stretches its arms to the "uttermost parts of the globe." ”

“ There are also lycées for boys and girls and a school of commerce and industry. The commercial port, which is separated from the town itself by the Cours d’Ajot, comprises a tidal port with docks and an outer harbour; it is protected by jetties to the east and west and by a breakwater on the south. ”

“ When all these conditions changed—when the discovery of the New World, and of the Cape route to the Indies, when the growth of north-country industries and one hundred other factors had taken away from the site of London its old topographical supremacy, the port was so firmly established that it provided its own sources of vitality.
It is always so in the economic affairs of a town or of a nation. Material causes are discovered to be more powerful in the middle period of their growth; once the town or nation are rooted they nourish themselves. ”