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Portland Harbour

This article is about the harbour in England. For the port in Maine, see Port of Portland (Maine). For the port in Oregon, see Port of Portland (Oregon).

Southern and eastern entrances of Portland Harbour looking northeast from the Isle of Portland across Balaclava Bay. The dark colour of the water between the two breakwaters in the foreground indicates the position of the scuttled battleship HMS Hood.
The western side of the Harbour with Chesil Beach, Lyme Bay and the Fleet Lagoon in the background.

Portland Harbour is beside the Isle of Portland, Dorset, on the south coast of England. Construction of the harbour began in 1849; when completed in 1872, its 520-hectare (1,300-acre) surface area made it the largest human-made harbour in the world,[1] and it remains one of the largest in the world today. It is naturally sheltered by Portland to the south, Chesil Beach to the west and mainland Dorset to the north.[2] It consists of four breakwaters: two southern and two northern. These have a total length of 4.57 km (2.84 mi) and enclose approximately 1,000 ha (2,500 acres) of water.

Portland Harbour was built by the Admiralty as a facility for the Royal Navy (though access was also available to merchant ships);[3] on 11 December 1923 it was formally designated HM Naval Base (HMNB) Portland,[4] and continued to serve as such until closure in 1995.

  1. ^ "BBC: Portland's Breakwater Fort". Archived from the original on 30 April 2023. Retrieved 25 December 2019.
  2. ^ "Portland Harbour". Engineering timelines. Archived from the original on 2 March 2014. Retrieved 19 March 2016.
  3. ^ Cite error: The named reference Coad2013 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  4. ^ Cite error: The named reference PortlandHistoryPH was invoked but never defined (see the help page).

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