Portsmouth International Port: 50 facts for 50 years

It is 50 years since Portsmouth City Council created Portsmouth International Port.

A light has been shone on the port's history as part of the Portsmouth100 celebrations which themselves are marking the centenary since Portsmouth was first granted city status in 1926.

In its own time the port has enabled faster ferry travel, acted as a film set, and provided a gateway for millions and millions of bananas.

So here are 50 facts you may not know about Portsmouth International Port...

The port opened on 17 June 1976It is now the UK's biggest municipal port, owned and operated by Portsmouth City CouncilBrittany Ferries' newly acquired ship the Armorique was the first sailing, on a new route from Portsmouth to St Malo, a service still going strong todayThe land was previously occupied by a large gasometer container, workshops, disused cemetery Mile End Gardens, and mudflatsIt is situated near to Portsmouth Historic Dockyard – home of legendary warships such as HMS Victory and the Mary Rose - and Portsmouth Naval Base, both sites which predate the port by hundreds of years

The Camber, part of the port complex which deals with smaller vessels, is the site of Portsmouth's oldest commercial docks dating back to about 1180The modern port's origins date back to the early 1970s when ferry companies called on the council to construct a ferry port to cut an hour off the time it took to cross the channel from Southampton to France and SpainIt offers more ferry routes than any other UK ferry port, serving Caen, Cherbourg, Le Havre, and St Malo in France, Bilbao and Santander in Spain, Guernsey and Jersey in the Channel Islands, and the Isle of WightThe Hoverspeed Great Britain, which berthed at the port, claimed The Hale's Trophy in 1990 for the fastest crossing of the AtlanticBrittany Ferries' Normandie became the first cruise ferry and first purpose-built ferry to operate from the port in 1992

The Tour de France passed through the port in 1994By 1999 the ferry port was extended to Whale Island Way and a new exit leading directly onto the M275 slip road was constructedIt was opened by actress and politician Glenda Jackson when she was junior minister for transportThe first cruise ship to visit was Viking's Bordeaux in 2000, accommodating 225 passengersIn 2014 Normandy veteran Bernard 'Bernie' Jordan, later the subject of the Michael Caine film The Great Escape, took the ferry to Caen after sneaking out of his care home to pay his respects at the 70th anniversary D-Day commemorations

The port was the first in the UK to install quick release mooring hooks on its berths, making the operation safer and faster It became a Hollywood film set in 2017 for the Joan Collins, Pauline Collins and Franco Nero movie The Time of Their Lives. The film currently has an 18% score on Rotten TomatoesSaga's Spirit of Adventure became the first ship to be named at the port during a ceremony in July 2021Virgin Voyages' first worldwide sailing from Portsmouth took place in August 2021 with the cruise line's maiden ship Scarlet LadyAbout 30 cruise operators currently use the port

More than 70 cruise ships will make a stop at the port in 2026Six of these vessels will visit for the first timeThe council says each cruise call has the ability to generate up to £1.5m for the city's economyA terminal extension opened in August 2023 and is carbon neutral, using seawater technology to heat and cool the building It has been named The Ayrton Berth, after Portsmouth-born engineer, mathematician, physicist, suffragette and inventor Hertha Ayrton

It is also aiming to be the UK's leading sustainable port through its use of solar canopies, living walls, and a £30m shore power scheme, designed to stop ships burning fuel while berthed It wants to reach net zero by 2030 and become zero emission by 2050The largest ship to visit Portsmouth was TUI's Mein Schiff 3 in 2023 which carried 2,000 German passengers and surpassed the size of aircraft carriers HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of WalesThe port has five cruise and ferry berthsIt also has two deep-water cargo berths

This is because the port also has a freight business, which was booming by the 1980sEach year £7.5bn worth of cargo comes through, with 2.9m tonnes handled annuallyLast year 291,090 tonnes of fruit came into the portIt is responsible for at least 50% of the UK's bananas, though this has risen as high as 70%Undercover officers intercepted cocaine with a street value of about £200m in a cargo of bananas from Colombia in 2021

A dock worker was also jailed in 2022 for conspiring to import £118m of cocaine into the UK in a shipment of – you guessed it – bananas Last year the cargo ship Baltic Klipper was on its way to the port when containers full of bananas spilled into the sea Food, drink, clothing, cars, steel, building materials, and wind blades are also among the freightAnimals come through the port from time to time too, such as those on their way to Monkey World in DorsetA gorilla is also expected to drop by in the near future!

All of the Christmas trees for the Channel Islands pass through the port each yearIt's not just Christmas - 95% of everything consumed on the Channel Islands is shipped from PortsmouthCrane operators at the site can lift, in tandem, a combined weight of up to 250 tonnesThe port employs 92 people directly onsiteAnnually it brings more than £10.8m to the council's budget

It claims to contribute £195m to the local economy each year, and £400m to the national economyOxford Economics' latest report found the most traded products were power generators worth £2bn1.6m passengers use the port each yearThis includes 131,000 cruise passengersAn open day at the port last weekend attracted its largest attendance to date, with 2,200 people taking part in harbour tours and onboard vessel visits