Saint Helier Harbour | |
---|---|
Location | |
Country | Jersey |
Location | St Helier |
Coordinates | 49°10′56″N2°06′39″W / 49.182106°N 2.1109°W |
UN/LOCODE | JE STH |
Details | |
Opened | c. 1790 |
Operated by | Ports of Jersey |
Owned by | States of Jersey |
No. of piers | 5 |
Statistics | |
Passenger traffic | 750,000 [1] |
Website Official website |
Saint Helier Harbour is the main harbour on the Channel Island of Jersey. It is on the south coast of the island, occupying most of the coast of the main town of St Helier. It is operated by Ports of Jersey, a company wholly owned by the Government of Jersey. [2]
Facilities include three marinas for berthing private yachts on pontoons, drying harbours and facilities for commercial shipping including roll-on/roll-off ferry berths, a tanker berth and a dock for lift-on/lift-off cargo ships.
Saint Helier Harbour is named after Helier (or Helerius), a 6th-century ascetic hermit from Belgium. The traditional date of his martyrdom is AD 555. His feast day, marked by an annual municipal and ecumenical pilgrimage to the Hermitage, is on 16 July.
The medieval hagiographies of Helier, the patron saint martyred in Jersey and after whom the parish and town are named, suggest a picture of a small fishing village on the dunes between the marshy land behind and the high-water mark.
An Abbey of Saint Helier was founded in 1155 on L'Islet, a tidal island adjacent to the Hermitage. Closed at the Reformation, the site of the abbey was fortified to create the castle that replaced Mont Orgueil as the island's major fortress. The new Elizabeth Castle was named after the Queen by the Governor of Jersey 1600–1603, Sir Walter Raleigh.
The harbour was constructed in the early 19th century. Previously, ships coming into the town had only a small jetty at the site now called the English Harbour and the French Harbour. The Chamber of Commerce urged the States Assembly to build a new harbour, but they refused, so the Chamber took it into their own hands and paid to upgrade the harbour in 1790. A new breakwater was constructed to shelter the jetty and harbours. In 1814, the merchants constructed the roads now known as Commercial Buildings and Le Quai des Marchands to connect the harbours to the town and in 1832 construction was finished on the Esplanade and its sea wall. A rapid expansion in shipping led the States of Jersey in 1837 to order the construction of two new piers: the Victoria and Albert Piers. [3] : 242
The main harbour provides deep water berths for commercial vessels alongside the Victoria Quay and New North Quay.
The Elizabeth Harbour consists of a ferry terminal, two roll-on/roll-off ferry berths and a trailer park for shipping containers. These are used by high-speed craft to Poole, Guernsey and Saint-Malo, traditional ferries to Saint-Malo, Guernsey and Portsmouth and foot passenger ferries to Granville, Barneville-Carteret and Sark. [4]
There are three marinas — the La Collette Yacht Basin, the Saint Helier Marina (built in 1980) and the Elizabeth Marina. The La Collette Yacht Basin is the only one of these to provide non-tidal, 24-hour access to the sea and is home to Jersey's commercial fishing fleet. [5]
Since 2008, Saint Helier Marina has been the venue for the annual Jersey Boat Show. [6]
The Old Harbour, English Harbour and French Harbour have berths for over 500 motorboats and sailing yachts which dry out on the mud at low tide. [7]
Transport in Jersey is primarily through the motor vehicle. The island, which is the largest of the Channel Islands has 124,737 registered vehicles (2016). The island is committed to combatting climate change, having declared a climate emergency, and policy is focused on reducing dependence on the car. The island has a cycle network and bus service. The primary modes of transport for leaving the island are by air or sea.
Poole Harbour is a large natural harbour in Dorset, southern England, with the town of Poole on its shores. The harbour is a drowned valley (ria) formed at the end of the last ice age and is the estuary of several rivers, the largest being the Frome. The harbour has a long history of human settlement stretching to pre-Roman times. The harbour is extremely shallow, with one main dredged channel through the harbour, from the mouth to Holes Bay.
St Helier is the capital of Jersey, the largest of the Channel Islands in the English Channel. It is the most populous of the twelve parishes of Jersey, with a population of 35,822, over one-third of the island's total population. The town of St Helier is the largest settlement and only town of Jersey. The town consists of the built-up areas of St Helier, including First Tower, and parts of the parishes of St Saviour and St Clement, with further suburbs in surrounding parishes.
The word dock in American English refers to one or a group of human-made structures that are involved in the handling of boats or ships. In British English, the term is not used the same way as in American English, it is used to mean the area of water that is next to or around a wharf or quay. The exact meaning varies among different variants of the English language.
Helier was a 6th-century ascetic hermit. He is the patron saint of Jersey in the Channel Islands, and in particular of the town and parish of Saint Helier, the island's capital. He is also invoked as a healing saint for diseases of the skin and eyes.
Saint Peter Port Harbour is located in Saint Peter Port, Guernsey. It was a natural anchorage used by the Romans which has been changed into an artificial harbour that is now the island's main port for passengers. Loose cargo, liquids and gas are shipped to and from St Sampson's harbour.
Portsmouth Harbour is a 1,264.2-hectare (3,124-acre)/12.6 km2 (4.9 sq mi) biological Site of Special Scientific Interest between Portsmouth and Gosport in Hampshire. It is a Ramsar site and a Special Protection Area.
Braye Harbour is the main harbour on the north side of the island of Alderney, in the Channel Islands, a dependency of the British Crown. A 3,000 feet (910 m) breakwater was built by the Admiralty to protect the Navy in the 19th century shelters Braye Harbour. The harbour faces out onto the Swinge, which is part of the English Channel, and it is at Braye that most of the island's freight comes in. Braye is more or less a suburb of St Anne, the island capital; the centre of St Anne lies approximately 1 mile from the harbour.
St. Aubin is a town and port in St. Brelade in Jersey, the largest of the Channel Islands. It is located on the western end of St. Aubin's Bay, on the south coast of the island, opening out into the Gulf of Saint-Malo.
Elizabeth Castle is a castle and tourist attraction, on a tidal island within the parish of Saint Helier, Jersey. Construction was started in the 16th century when the power of the cannon meant that the existing stronghold at Mont Orgueil was insufficient to defend the Island and the port of St Helier was vulnerable to attack by ships armed with cannons.
The Port of Dover is a cross-channel ferry, cruise terminal, maritime cargo and marina facility situated in Dover, Kent, south-east England. It is the nearest English port to France, at just 34 kilometres (21 mi) away, and is one of the world's busiest maritime passenger ports, with 11.7 million passengers, 2.6 million lorries, 2.2 million cars and motorcycles and 80,000 coaches passing through it in 2017, and with an annual turnover of £58.5 million a year. This contrasts with the nearby Channel Tunnel, the only fixed link between the island of Great Britain and the European mainland, which now handles an estimated 20 million passengers and 1.6 million trucks per year.
HD Ferries was a fast catamaran Channel Islands ferry service between Jersey, Guernsey and Brittany. HD Ferries had daily departures from the port of Saint Helier (Jersey) to St Peter Port (Guernsey) and then to St Malo.
The Port of Southampton is a passenger and cargo port in the central part of the south coast of England. The modern era in the history of the Port of Southampton began when the first dock was inaugurated in 1843. After the Port of Felixstowe, Southampton is the second largest container terminal in UK, with a handled traffic of 1.5 million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEU). It also handles cruise ships, roll-on roll-off, dry bulk, and liquid bulk.
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St Helier Marina is one of three marinas located in Saint Helier Harbour, and is operated by Ports of Jersey.
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The Channel Islands are a group of islands off the coast of France. The largest island is Jersey, followed by Guernsey, Alderney, Sark, and a number of smaller islands, islets and rocky outcrops. The islands were separated from mainland Europe with rising sea levels in the Neolithic period; thereafter maritime activity commenced.