Famous Ports and Harbors from Above

The port of Rotterdam in the Netherlands handles millions of containerloads of freight every year.  For forty years after World War II, it was the busiest port in the world, and it continues to be the biggest in Europe.  Its massive facilities provide the crucial connection for freight traffic between Europe and Asia.  Contributor Mike Zwigjers used a DJI Mavic Pro to create an amazing aerial video of this mammoth harbor in the southern Netherlands, the driver of the economy of the second largest Dutch city.

Contributor and pilot 11ShotsMedia created this drone video of Antwerp, the great Belgian harbor city.  Surprising to many, the city is actually Belgium's largest city proper, although in terms of metropolitan area Brussels is larger.  Antwerp is located in Flanders (northern Belgium) on the Scheldt River, near the end of its run where it flows into an estuary and thence to the North Sea.  The city's massive seaport is one of the busiest in Europe, second only to Rotterdam in the Netherlands.

Check out this fascinating drone video of a giant containership in the port of Hamburg, Germany, compliments of top AirVuz contributor and pilot Elb Cut Media.  Situated on the Elbe River about 110 km (around 70 mi.) upstream from its mouth on the North Sea, Hamburg's containerport is Germany's busiest; as of 2018, it was the third-busiest containerport in Europe after Rotterdam and Antwerp in the Netherlands and Belgium, respectively.  The main part of the port lies on the north bank of the Elbe, just to the south of the central city.   

Take an aerial tour of one of the world's largest containerized shipping ports, compliments of JN Drone.  It's Hong Kong's Kwai Tsing Container Terminals, which lies along the Rambler Channel in the New Territories neighborhood of Kwai Chung.  Built on reclaimed land the facility opened in 1972 as the Port of Hong Kong's answer to the containerization revolution.  In 2018, the port handled nearly 20 million 20 foot equivalent containers ("TEU"'), putting it at the #7 spot in the worldwide containerport rankings that year.  

Perhaps more than any other major city, Los Angeles owes its existence to the power of human will.  It's miraculous enough that a giant metropolis can exist in a region with almost no freshwater resources, and then there is this: Greater Los Angeles, with no natural harbor, was able to become home to the USA's two busiest seaports: the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.  In this drone video by  contributor mavictraveler, you'll get a bird's eye view of the Port of Los Angeles, also known as America's Port. 

Somewhat confusingly, Port Adelaide is actually not part of the city of Adelaide, the capital of the state of South Australia.  Port Adelaide was built to serve as the port for the city, which actually sits a few km/mi inland from the Gulf of St. Vincent.  Built on what were originally mangrove swamps, the port is one of the largest in Australia by freight volume and key to the country's agricultural exports.  In this video, Eye Fly Drones captures this important seaport from a bird's eye perspective.  

Marco Don created this drone video of Liverpool, the great port city in Northern England.  Located in the Mersey River estuary a bit to the southwest of Manchester, Liverpool played a key role in Britain's (and the world's) Industrial Revolution as the primary port by which cotton from the United States reached England's textile mills.  At the zenith of its arc, Liverpool was one of the wealthiest cities in the world.  More recently, Liverpool gave birth to a pop music sensation known as the Beatles.   

Ryanzooms used a DJI Mavic Pro drone to create this beautiful aerial of Durban, South Africa's third city and the largest in the eastern part of the country.  It sits on the Indian Ocean coastline, and is the principal city (although not the capital) of the KwaZulu-Natal province.  In addition to some very well known surfing beaches, Durban is home to the country's largest port.  At the end of the video, you'll get a nice view of the seaport and its fine natural harbor, known officially as the Port of Natal.  

Newcastle, Australis is home to one of the world's largest dry bulk ports.  Located in the state of New South Wales, Newcastle is the primary export port for Australia's vast coal trade.  While Australia is the world's fourth largest coal producer, it's the largest coal exporter, and Newcastle is the world's largest coal export port.  In this video, contributor thescience of travel gives us a bird's eye view of the great harbor as well as the railroads which feed it millions of tons of product from mines in the interior.   

For centuries, the Black Sea was the world's most important body of water for shipping.   While that is no longer the case, the great inland sea remains very significant, and is the only water path to the open ocean (via the Bosphorus Strait and then the Mediterranean) for four different countries.  The largest port on the great sea is Constanta, in Romania's Dobrogea region.  In this video, Claboo Media gives us a drone's eye view of this extremely modern seaport, part of a city which dates to 600 BC.

Baltimore, Maryland in the Mid-Atlantic USA has deep roots as a port city.  While the city's Inner Harbor area has been converted to other uses (in part because it was not deep enough to handle the deep drafts of large containerships), the port still remains one of the top 20 in the country, and it is the largest dry bulk port on the East Coast.  In this drone video, top contributor Jeff Walrich gives us an epic aerial view of the harbor landmark known as the Sugar Shack, the country's largest terminal for receiving sugar. 

Contributor and pilot WorldMoments created this stunning video of the great Colombian city of Cartagena on the Caribbean Sea.  Founded in the 16th century, it was once the most important port in the mighty Spanish Empire.  While it's still an important seaport city, it now also draws a large tourism business, attracting travelers with its Miami-like feel but with almost 500 years of history as well.  The video features amazing views of Bocagrande, Castillo de San Felipe, Manga, the Centro Historico, and more.

Lone Star Drones created this nice aerial view of one of the largest port facilities in the USA.  It's the Barbours Cut Terminal at Morgan's Point, in the eastern reaches of Houston.  The facility is part of the Port of Houston, which runs for many km/mi along the Buffalo Bayou, Galveston Bay, and the Houston Ship Channel. It's the second-busiest port in the United States by freight tonnage.  Opened in 1977, Barbours Cut is the largest single terminal at the port and the first to handle containerized cargo.

It would be hard to overstate the importance of international trade to the economy of Greater Los Angeles.  The area is home to the USA's largest container port (the Port of Los Angeles) as well as its second largest: the Port of Long Beach.   In 2017, the two ports on San Pedro Bay (directly south of downtown Los Angeles) together handled about 17 million 20-foot equivalent containers (TEU's), roughly 3x the figure for their closest competitor.  Here is a drone video of the Long Beach port, compliments of mavictraveler.  

The Port of Veracruz lies in the Mexican city of the same name on the Gulf of Mexico, just west of the Yucatan Peninsula.  It's the third-largest port in Mexico as well as the largest on its eastern coast.  In 1914, the United States and Mexico fought a mini-war here, during the course of which USA forces fought for and then occupied the city for seven months.  Award-winning contributor Postandfly used a drone to create an amazing aerial view of this important historical seaport, which was founded by the Spanish conquistadors in the early 16th century.  

Fortaleza is one of the oldest settlements in Brazil; it was actually "discovered" by the Spaniards but was not recognized as a Spanish discovery under the 1494 treaty that effectively divided the non-European world between Spain and Portugal.  Today it is one of the most important cities in Northeastern Brazil.  Its modest-sized port is primarily used for the export of bulk commodities (including sugar cane).  In recent years, it's increasingly being used as a cruise ship port of call, as you'll see in this drone video by DCIMagens.

Check out this fantastic drone video of a giant containership moored at the port of Le Havre, France, compliments of AirVuz contributor JAZ.   The ship is the CMA CGM Antoine de Saint Exupery, operated by the French shipping line CMA CGM.  Launched in 2018, the ship is one of the world's largest containerships, with a carrying capacity of nearly 21k 20 ft. equivalent units (TEU's).  Located on the country's Normandy coast, Le Havre is France's second-busiest seaport by tonnage (after Marseille) and its largest container port.  

Contributor Riverrat_productions created this aerial view of the port of Savannah, Georgia, one of the most important harbors on the USA's East Coast.  The port is situated on the Savannah River, about 30 km (around 18 mi.) from its mouth on the Atlantic Ocean.  As of 2018 Savannah was the fourth-biggest container port in the United States, measured by 20 foot equivalent units ("TEU's").  Savannah is the second-busiest port on the East Coast, after the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

Contributor @WesTheDroneMan created this fascinating drone video of the Port of New Orleans in the Southeastern USA.  Situated near the mouth of the Mississippi River, New Orleans is home to one of the busiest ports in the world.  It handles both containers and bulk cargo, and is one of the ten busiest ports in the United States by tonnage.   It handles several different types of ships, including barges (which move goods up and down the Mississippi) and ocean-going containerships and bulk cargo ships.  

The Port of Mobile, Alabama has a storied history.  Before the US Civil War, it was one of the busiest ports in the world and its cotton exports fueled the Industrial Revolution.  Later, Mobile's port became crucial to Alabama's steel and forest products industries.  Today, the port is amongst the USA's top bulk cargo ports, and amongst the top dozen in the country by overall freight tonnage.  Seen in this drone video by Bumble Bee Productions, the Mobile port also handles containerized cargo and cruise ships.  

Gothenburg is the second-largest city in Sweden after Stockholm.  A port city, it faces the northern tip of Denmark, beyond which lies the North Sea.  It hosts many festivals, including the annual Gothenburg Film Festival, the largest such event in Scandinavia.  Droneflix used a Phantom 4 Pro drone to create this mesmerizing portrait of the city from an aerial perspective.  Most of the footage is of the city's port, Sweden's primary port for trans-Atlantic trade and its largest by gross tonnage.

Check out this drone video of the port of Vitória, Brazil compliments of contributor DINHO (FPV-FILMS).  It's actually one of two ports in and around the city, the capital of the state of Espírito Santo in the country's Southeast region.  The other is the Port of Tubarão, which primarily focuses on exports of iron ore, one of Brazil's top three commodity exports along with soybeans and oil.  Together, Vitória's ports are amongst the busiest and most important in this giant South American country.

Check out this impressive drone video of a giant containership headed into the port of Tacoma, Washington, compliments of AirVuz contributor and pilot cward360.  The port is located at the head of Commencement Bay, at the southern end of Puget Sound.  In 2014, the ports of Tacoma and Seattle effectively combined operations, creating the Northwest Seaport Alliance; as a combined entity, as of 2018, it was the fifth-busiest containerport in the USA and the busiest on the country's West Coast outside of Los Angeles.

The city of Montevideo in Uruguay arose where it did because of its potential as a harbor.  It's situated on Montevideo Bay, a protected area of the Rio de la Plata.  The city's port is one of two major seaports on the great estuary, the other being Buenos Aires on its far side.  The port is one of the major components of the economy of Uruguay's capital city, which is home to one in three Uruguayans.  In this video, you'll get a drone's eye view of the great harbor, compliments of Drone 5.

Check out this fantastic aerial view of the port city of Santos in Southeastern Brazil by Phil2go2019.  The city lies in the state of the São Paulo, just southeast of the state's namesake capital city (and the country's largest).  The main part of the city shares the island of São Vicente with the island's namesake city.  Established by the Portuguese in the 16th century, Santos is home to the busiest container port in South America and the continent's second-largest port as measured by overall freight tonnage.  

Odessa is the main seaport of Ukraine, and one of the largest on the Black Sea.  It's spread out over a length of coastline of the country's third-largest city, on the west side of Odessa Bay.  Together with its satellite ports, it's the largest Black Sea port for handing liquid and dry bulk cargo; it's also home to one of the seas's largest passenger terminals.  In this drone video by smakozawr, you'll get an aerial tour of the port, with a focus on its most modern facility: its containerized cargo terminal.  

Check out these amazing aerial views of New York Harbor and Lower Manhattan, compliments of calladrone.  Some of the highlights include a great shot looking north over the Statue of Liberty towards Freedom Tower at :10; the Robbins Reef Lighthouse a at Constable Hook in Bayonne, New Jersey (:25); the North Cove Yacht Harbor (:50); Battery Park (1:10); the Staten Island Ferry (1:20); and the Cape Liberty Cruise Port in Bayonne, New Jersey (2:00) and the adjacent General Container Terminal (2:10). 

Content creator and pilot Krecik Turbo used a DJI Mavic Pro drone to create this aerial of a cruise ship docked in the Baltic Sea port of Gdynia, Poland.  It's the second largest city in the Pomerania region after Gdansk, which lies to its south.  It's located on the western shores of the Bay of Gdansk, just south of the area which is partly divided from the rest of the bay by the Hel Peninsula.  Gdynia is a significant leisure travel destination and an important port for cruise ships plying the waters of the Baltic.  

Check out this fantastic drone video of the great port of Thessaloniki, Greece, compliments of AirVuz contributor kostas Gur.  It's primarily a bulk cargo port, with annual capacity of about 16 million tons split roughly equally between dry bulk and liquid cargoes (primarily petroleum products).  It also maintains a small container terminal, although its containerized cargo capacity is far below that of the port of Piraeus.  Finally, the port operates one of the busier passenger terminals in the Aegean Sea region.    

Former DVOW Finalist benhawkinslive used a DJI Mavic Pro 3 to create this outstanding drone video of the port of Felixstowe in the UK.  Felixstowe is located in Suffolk, one of the counties of the East of England region northeast of London.  Situated on the North Sea, more or less due west of the Dutch city of Rotterdam, the port's two main terminals handle about 4 million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEU's) per year.  It's by far the largest container ports in the UK and amongst the ten busiest in all of Europe.   

Check out this fantastic drone video of a cargo ship heading into the harbor of Kuwait City, compliments of top AirVuz contributor The Drone Life PK.  He filmed the Hong Kong flagged Yangtze Ambition bulk carrier sailing into the Shuwaikh Port, which is just to the southwest of the city center.  It's the primary import port for this oil-rich (but otherwise resource-poor) emirate.   The Shuwaikh port is part of an industrial complex that includes many of the country's manufacturing facilities.  

Reinis Vilnis used a DJI Mavic Pro 2 Zoom to create this aerial tour of Riga Freeport, an important port on the Baltic Sea.  The capital and largest city of Latvia, Riga was one of the original Hanseatic League cities which dominated trade in Northern Europe for centuries.  It continues to serve an important transport function.  The largest by far of several ports in Riga, the Freeport primarily handles cargo (bulk and container) headed in and out of Russia and the other former Soviet Union states.  

Contributor Caldroneflyer used a DJI Mavic Pro 2 to create this aerial view of the port of Oakland, California.  Lying on the east side of San Francisco Bay just west of downtown Oakland, Oakland's seaport long ago overtook the port of San Francisco.  The primary seaport for Northern California, Oakland is the fourth busiest seaport on the USA's West Coast, after Los Angeles, Long Beach, and Seattle-Tacoma (since 2015 a single facility).  It's one of the ten busiest container ports in the country. 

Check out this drone video of the port city of Corpus Christi, Texas, compliments of contributor Bumble Bee Productions.  Situated on the Gulf of Mexico, it's the eighth-largest city in Texas as of 2019.  The city's port was the site of a US Civil War battle in 1862, in which Union forces repelled a Confederate naval incursion to bombard the city. The current deep-water port, not technically within the city limits, was built in the 1920's.  Today, it's the home of the fifth-busiest port in the USA..  

Located at the head of Delaware Bay, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania has always been an important port city.  While the City of Brotherly Love is no longer the manufacturing powerhouse it once was, its seaport and those of the neighboring cities together constitute one of the larger port areas in the eastern United States.  In this drone video by contributor and pilot Chris Bonano, you'll get a bird's eye view of the port facilities along the western side of the Delaware River, just south of the Walt Whitman Bridge.    

In this drone video by Gizmo Drones, you'll get an aerial view of Port Melbourne, an inner ring suburb of Australia's second-largest city.  The area shown is the container terminal near Sandridge Lookout, which lies just beyond the mouth of the Yarra River.  Somewhat confusingly, most of the Port of Melbourne (Australia's busiest port) is actually not in the city of Port Melbourne but rather in West Melbourne, along the Yarra River; the area shown in the video is one of the few facilities of the Port of Melbourne located in Port Melbourne.

AirVuz contributor and drone pilot pedro castilla brings us this excellent aerial tour of the port of Kobe Japan.  One of Japan's 6-7 largest cities, Kobe is situated on the north side of Osaka Bay, near the southern end of the island of Honshu.  Considered part of the Greater Osaka area (Japan's second-largest urban connurbation, after Greater Tokyo), Kobe is Japan's fourth largest container seaport.  The land area of the city has been considerably augmented by reclamation using landfill dredged from the harbor.    

Check out this impressive drone video of the Port of Miami, Florida, compliments of AirVuz contributor Santiago.  Also known as PortMiami, the complex covers Dodge Island, an artificial island at the south end of Biscayne Bay.  The northern part of the island houses the port's passenger port, the busiest in the world.  The subject of the video is the cargo port on the south side of Dodge Island; the largest such facility in the state of Florida, it's one of the USA's top ten container ports by annual volume.  

Check out this excellent nighttime hyperlapse drone video of the Russian port of Murmansk at night, compliments of AirVuz contributor and pilot murmanak.  Located at nearly 69 degrees north latitude, Murmansk has the distinction of being the northernmost major city in the world.  The city sits on Kola Bay (part of the Berents Sea), and despite being within the Arctic Circle its port is ice-free all year.  The seaport is one of Russia's most important, and during World War II it served as one of the country's lifelines.  

For a first upload to AirVuz, new contributor worldfromabove brings us this drone video of the port city of Portsmouth in the United Kingdom.  With the best natural harbor on the southern (English Channel) coast of the island of Great Britain, Portsmouth has long played a key role as a major base for the Royal Navy.  Technically an island, it sits across a stait known as the Solent from the much larger (area-wise) Isle of Wight.  At one point during the height of the British Empire, Portsmouth was the world's most heavily fortified city.  

Check out this excellent aerial view of the Port of Port Arthur, Texas, compliments of AirVuz contributor and drone pilot Bumble Bee Productions.  Port Arthur is located on Lake Sabine, an inlet of the Gulf of Mexico on the Texas/Louisiana border.  The tiny, virtually abandoned settlement came into its own following the Spindletop oil strike of 1901, which ushered in the first great Texas oil boom.  Home to the USA's largest oil refinery, the port is one of the busiest bulk cargo seaports on the Gulf Coast.  

Contributor duluthaerial used a DJI Mavic Pro 2 to shoot this aerial of the port and harbor of Duluth, Minnesota.  Located in the southwestern corner of Lake Superior, it's the world's largest freshwater port.  The port's largest commodity is a form of processed iron ore known as taconite, which is produced in the nearby Mesabi Iron Range mines.   The port also handles millions of tons of grain shipments.  In the first decades of the 20th century, Duluth was the USA's busiest port measured by freight tonnage.  

AirVuz contributor seaview.drone created this excellent drone video of the harbor of Dunkirk (Dunkerque), France.  Dunkirk is located on the English Channel near the northernmost tip of France, not far from the Belgian border.  Its harbor was the scene of one of the more consequential events of World War II: the great evacuation of over 300,000 Allied troops (including the bulk of the British Expeditionary Force) in late May and early June of 1940, as France was collapsing under the weight of an invasion by Nazi Germany.  

The Australian city of Gladstone is home to one of the world's largest dry bulk commodity export ports, with annual throughput on the order of 100 million tons.  In this drone video by Aerial Media Gladstone, you'll get an aerial tour of the port's Auckland Point terminal, the oldest part of the port.  While Auckland Point originally primarily handled coal (which currently accounts for about two-thirds of the port's overall throughput tonnage), it's recently been converted to handle limestone.  

For a first upload to AirVuz, new contributor murmanak brings us this excellent drone video from the port of Murmansk, Russia.  The city is situated on Kola Fjord, an inlet of the Berents Sea.  With a population of around 300k, it's the largest city within the Arctic Circle.  Despite its northerly location, the city's port remains ice-free throughout the year due to the effect of the North Atlantic Current.  It is the country's fourth-busiest seaport, and the busiest in Northwestern Russia after St. Petersburg.