Trading and fishing ports - Interior fittings and equipment

Technological change in the port handling sector, as in many other sectors, has profoundly altered the port landscape over the last thirty years. Not so long ago, ports still resembled veritable anthills, where the use of human power was the rule, creating that special atmosphere to which the films of the time are the only testimony.

Today, the ports seem deserted, as if abandoned.

On closer inspection, however, they may have lost their picturesque character, but they have gained in efficiency, becoming industrial complexes where productivity and competitiveness have become the rule.

The former docks, now obsolete, have lost their original vocation, and the stores that once lined them have been converted into housing or service complexes, which have become popular with city dwellers (docks in London, Amsterdam, Genoa, Montreal, etc.).

New specialized terminals have emerged, dedicated to a single type of traffic, sometimes even integrated into an industrial process (bulk terminals for thermal power plants, steelworks with their feet in the water, as at Dunkirk or Fos in France).

At the same time, the number of "factory terminals", which at the time were limited to liquid transshipment facilities, diversified.

The purpose of this document is to review and describe the various structures and facilities that make up today's ports.