Seaport Cities Trivia Quiz

Answer: Madrid

Mumbai is the largest and busiest port of India. Situated on the west coast of India it has six islands within its natural harbour to accommodate port facilities. It is not a coincidence that the commercial capital of India earned that status on the back of a large seaport to allow trading with India's neighbours.

Manila has a history as a trading port as far back as the ninth century, long before the port city started trading with the Spanish in the 1600s. The settlement was originally made on Manila Bay, a natural harbour and an ideal location to locate a port. Manila is by far the biggest port in the Philippines.

In 2006, Melbourne became the biggest container port in Australia when it exceeded two million container units, the first time this milestone was reached. Melbourne is situated on Port Phillip Bay, a natural harbour, the port is located at West Melbourne at the mouth of the Yarra River (which had to be dredged to allow the requisite ships to berth).

Madrid is an ancient city in the centre of the Iberian Peninsula and indeed in Spain. The city is located on the River Manzanares, which empties into the Jarama river, which in turn is a tributary to the Tagus. The river was once navigable but because of damming and re-routing through Madrid, would never be deep enough to be a major port (as well as the issue of navigable distance to the open sea [through Portugal]).

Answer: Shanghai

At the turn of the twentieth century, the busiest port in the world by gross tonnage shifted half as much again as Shanghai did, which was the third busiest at the time. By 2005, Shanghai had become the busiest port in the world and by 2016 was trading three times as much as the former busiest port.
Shanghai has a massive population of over 25 million with maritime frontages on the Huang Po River (Shanghai city centre - a man made tributary of the Yangste River), its other river frontage, plus the East China sea which curls around to include Ningbo-Zhoushan ports as part of the Port of Shanghai system (but governed separately). The port system now trades three times as much as its nearest competitor.

If there was any doubt about China's 21st century credentials as an economic superpower, consider this: In 2002 China has one port in the top ten busiest (by gross tonnage). This port was Shanghai. In 2016 it had seven out of the world's top ten busiest ports. The majority of its shipping activity is exports.

Answer: Singapore

The story of Singapore is the story of the little country that could. Lacking in both natural resources and indeed land, Singapore became wealthy on its ability to trans-ship products. Blessed with a favourable location that is both an aviation hub for the pacific Asian region and the Australasian land mass, plus it being located on a north/south and east/west maritime crossroads, Singapore imports raw or unprocessed goods, repackages them by value-adding and then exports same.

Its shipping tonnage has actually increased each year, it is just that Shanghai's port has grown faster.

However Singapore has lost market share to Shanghai so it would be very unlikely to ever regain the world's number one position (as occurrred with Rotterdam and London which were both once the busiest seaport in the world)

Answer: Los Angeles

When viewing data on how busy a port is, caution is advised. The absolute figure on how much product is shipped is Gross Tonnage but this is hard to measure because of differences in what a "ton" actually is. One reliable and quantifiable way to measure how busy a port is, is to determine how many containers pass through the port. This is measured by twenty-foot equivalent units (TEU) which is the length of a standard container. (forty foot container counts as two TEUs). Some data about ports quote business as the number of containers shipped/received but not all ports are container ports.

The Port of Los Angeles has been the biggest American container port for decades. What is really surprising is it is situated adjacent to America's second biggest port - The Port of Long Beach. The two are contiguous but run by two separate cities. When you break down the data though, it is not surprising: The main trading partners are China, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam and Taiwan - and the Panama Canal has a limitation on ships that draw 50 feet. This means the necessary large ships cannot reach the eastern ports. In fact with the exception of the Port of New York and New Jersey at number three, the top four container ports are on the West Coast: LA, Long Beach, Seattle/Tacoma, with Oakland (San Francisco) at number six, in 2017.

Answer: New Orleans

The Mississippi port system is three ports all connected on a 55 mile strip of the river (Ports of Baton Rouge, South Louisiana and Port of New Orleans). In gross tonnage this is the busiest port in the US. These three connected ports serve as a gateway for nearly 55 to 70 percent of all U.S. exported corn, soy, and wheat as well as other foodstuffs grown in the Mid-West. Major imports are steel, rubber, coffee, and raw and processed food. The foodstuffs grown in the Mid-West cannot be exported through Chicago as some of the Great Lakes ice over in winter. Barges bring the food from these areas down the Mississippi river and the empty barges then take steel, rubber and foodstuffs back.

The second biggest port in the US is Houston. Nearly all US produced oil exits through two Texan ports with Houston being by far the biggest.

Answer: It is exporting coal

In the early part of the 21st century, the two biggest ports in Australia were Port Headland and Dampier. They ship exclusively iron ore plus smaller quantities of other metal ores mined nearby. The next biggest are Hay Point, near Mackay in Queensland, Newcastle, Gladstone and Brisbane.

These centres ship out the enormous amounts of black coal found in Central Queensland and Central NSW. Hay Point only ships coal but Gladstone and Newcastle ship other products but coal is the biggest export by far. Only then rank the capital city ports with their high container activity, Brisbane being the busiest as it has a sizable coal export trade as well as having container activity close to Melbourne, Australia's largest container port.

Answer: Manchester (upper left)

The biggest port in Germany is Hamburg: The Port of Hamburg is a seaport on the river Elbe, 110 kilometres inland from the North Sea.

Porto is on the coast but its port (Hah! its name, "Oporto" means "port") is on the Duoro River and is famous for its worldwide distribution of the fortified wine named after the city.

Rotterdam in the Netherlands is by far Europe's busiest port. It used to be the busiest in the world until it was overtaken by Singapore and then Shanghai. The Nieuwe Waterweg ("New Waterway"), a large canal, was designed and created to connect the Rhine and Meuse rivers to the North Sea, facilitating large ship berthing on a river system.

Manchester, one of the great Industrial Era cities, was landlocked until 1894 when the Manchester ship canal (58km) was built to connect it to the Mersey Estuary near Liverpool. However the need for larger ocean-going ships (The canal could only accept ships that drew less than 24 feet) and the port's failure to adapt to modern freight-handling methods resulted in poor activity and closure of the docks in Salford in 1984.

Answer: Yes

Vancouver is a busy port in Canada for the same reason LA is for the States: Access to major markets such as China, Japan and Taiwan. Over half of Canada's container traffic is routed through Vancouver and is unlikely to be surpassed because of physical limitations in the eastern maritime ports. Montreal is busy but lacks ocean access (but at least it does not freeze over like other cities on the Great Lakes). Toronto as a port is limited by its lack of ocean access; it has never had a large container port relative to Montreal and Vancouver. Halifax, with direct ocean access, is a notable maritime city with its natural harbour.

It is also a major naval centre as well.

Answer: No

Both London and Liverpool were very important ports, London being the busiest in the world at one time. Liverpool was built on a maritime and mercantile economy. In 2014, they were the second and fourth busiest ports in Britain but their market share is slipping. The busiest port in Britain by far is Grimsby and Immingham located on the east coast on the River Humber estuary near Grimsby with a cargo volume of 59 million tons being loaded in 2016. The port was initially built for exporting coal in 1906. In the 21st century, the port imports and exports iron ore, and coal is also traded, both through their dedicated terminals.

Felixstowe, 90 miles north-east of London, is the biggest container port in Britain. Over 40% of Britain's container traffic is routed through this port.

Answer: Three of only a few warm-water ports in Russia

The size of Russia is determined by its need to have access to sea trade routes. The northern coastline of Russia is ice-bound for over six months of the year. The south is landlocked with China, Mongolia, India and other Asian countries. The east coast was too far away from most of the population, so that leaves the west coasts around the Black and Baltic Seas.

Until Peter the Great overthrew the Swedes and created the seaport of St Petersburg in the very late 1600s, the Russians had no access to the Baltic Sea. Even when the Soviet Bloc reverted to its individual countries, Russia ensured it retained an exclave at Kaliningrad to have access to the Baltic.

Until 1829, Russia had no coastline with the Black Sea as it was occupied by the Turks. When it did, it had access to ports on the Crimean Peninsula such as Yalta and Sevastapol. However these were passed to the Ukraine SSF in 1954 and when Ukraine became independent in 1990, these ports stayed with the Ukraine. In 2014, Russia 'annexed' them as part of Russia as the only major city it had retained on the Baltic was Sochi which had passenger but few cargo facilities in its port.

In 1860, Russia acquired the western peninsula and the island of Sakhalin by the Treaty of Beijing. It evicted the Chinese and started a settlement on Golden Horn Bay which was notably a warm-water port. In 1916 the small city was connected to Moscow by the completion of the Trans-Siberian Railway.
Vladivostok is the home port of the Russian Pacific Fleet and the largest Russian port on the Pacific Ocean. The cargo port exports minerals mined in Siberia and had container facilities as well.