Maritime Dover

The Port of Dover, just 22 miles from the French coast, has long been claimed to be the busiest ferry port in the world.  At peak times, vessels enter and leave the port every few seconds.  In 1997, after major damage was done by a fire in the Channel Tunnel, the ferry companies carried 21,322,945 passengers, 3,58,355 cars and 1,603,440 trucks, plus coaches and motor-cycles (no figures to hand).

The freight lorries using the port on a single day, if parked bumper to bumper, would, according to a recent Harbour Board bulletin, stretch for 90 miles, or the distance from Dover to Guildford!

The record for the number of coaches passing through the port on a single day is 1,514, set on 7th December 1996.  On 12 August that year, 17,553 cars passed through the port in a 24-hour period - another record. 

In addition to lorry traffic, 200,000 tonnes of fruit were landed here in 2006, along with nearly 200,000 tones of aggregate dredged from the sea bed.  The port of Dover also handled 63 per cent of all cross-Channel road freight passing through Kent in 2006 and nearly 60,000 tonnes of Kent grain were exported from the port in the same period.  As many as 340 trucks an hour are weighed in at the port for embarkation to the Continent.

The cruise terminals handled over 200,000 passengers in 2006.  In the same period there were over 45,000 ferry movements in and out of the port.

Some of these pages have been updated with information and pictures from Bavington Jones (1907).