Cork Harbour is often described locally as “the second largest harbour in the world”. For a long time, I’ve been somewhat sceptical of this claim, so I decided to compare its size to other harbours using the MAPfrappe website. With this website, you can quickly compare locations with other sites around the world. I used it a while ago to compare well known islands to Ireland.
First of all, here is Cork Harbour. It’s a natural harbour, dominating a region of 22 km x 16 km east of Cork City. A very rough estimate of its water-surface area is about 70 sq km, although I am open to correction on this. The land area in the centre is Great island, home to the town of Cobh and connected to the mainland by two bridges, one road, one rail. Less than two kilometres separate the headlands as it meets the sea, making it by any reckoning, a fine, strategically important natural harbour. Its considerable depth in many places allows large ocean going vessels – tankers, container ships and liners – to enter and depart with ease.
It’s a beautiful, impressive and fascinating area, full of history and natural beauty. But is it one of the biggest in the world?
According to Wikipedia, its rivals are Sydney Harbour, Halifax Harbour in Nova Scotia and Poole Harbour in Dorset. Let’s see how they compare.
Poole Harbour, Dorset UK
Aw look. How cute. Cork Harbour (silhouetted like a horned monster petitioning mariners just outside) wins this one. Poole, incidentally, also thinks of itself as one of the largest natural harbours in the world. I hate to break it to you, guys.
Halifax Harbour, Nova Scotia
Cork harbour wins this one too, even if you were to be generous and start at McNabs island.
Port Jackson / Sydney Harbour, Australia.
Y’know, I was surprised at this one, because most Corkonians will gladly concede that Port Jackson is larger. It doesn’t look like it here. The main open water areas are at least comparable.
After, these three, the assessment is.. maybe. But then, are there not other spaces that could rival Cork in size? New York, San Francisco or Rio perhaps?
New York City
It’s close. Very close. I’d nearly give New York Harbour the edge. Interestingly, the mouth – Verrazano Narrows – is so similar in size to Roches Point / Crosshaven we should really have our own suspension bridge, just for the crack.
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Rio’s Guanabara Bay looks to me like a proper harbour and it’s clearly bigger than our own – in fact you could possibly fit the whole of Cork Harbour into it.
It gets worse.
San Francisco
Oh this is not good. Cork Harbour looks tiny. And they have a suspension bridge at the mouth of their harbour too.
Oh, and we forgot:
Tokyo
or:
Auckland Manukau, NZ
or, staying in New Zealand:
Kaipara Harbour, NZ
Whoa. Still though, we’re big for Europe, right? Right?
I give you:
Lisbon.
and:
Brest
and finally,
Oslo
Folks, we need to take a long, good look at ourselves. Even if we are only the second largest harbour “by navigable area” (a claim I suspect given the sizes of Rio, San Fran and Tokyo, or we want to be pernickety about what harbour really means, we have to content ourselves that the claim “2nd Largest Harbour in the World” is dodgy. Seriously dodgy.
Still beats Dublin, though.
Passive Impressions 
Excellent work, pinning down the real measured harbour sizes. And you don’t even have to go outside Ireland – try Lough Foyle and the Shannon Estuary for size. Then try the really big ones -Trondheim Fjord, Port Phillip Bay, Puget Sound and Lake Maracaibo. ThIs claim (now given quasi-official status on the cork.ie website) isn’t just “seriously dodgy” – it’s sheer nonsense, and (what’s worse) grossly misleading advertising. Who do we think we’re fooling, apart from ourselves?
Thank you Sean. I have heard it being called the 2nd largest harbour by navigable area, but even then this sounds like a dodgy claim. Think Rio for example.
Cork may not be the 2nd largest harbour, but it still is the greatest harbour.
Hardly. Most of it is shallow and unusable.
What this exercise fails to take into account is harbour depth. Cork, Poole, Sydney and San Francisco are estuarine and are therefore very shallow in most places, and unusable for ocean-going ships. Halifax Harbour on the other hand is essentially a fjord, and therefore is deep and had steep sides. That allows the harbour to hold vastly more ships, and allows ocean-going ships to dock pretty much against the shoreline (i.e. no long piers). It also doesn’t require any dredging. Take a look at the charts, and you’ll see what I mean. Add to that its incredible military history, and Halifax Harbour is unquestionably the greatest harbour in the world.
You have the water-surface area of Cork at 70 km2.
Have a look at Port Phillip Bay, Melbourne Australia. I think it is just under 2000 km2.
I live at one end – takes 4 hours to drive around it to the other end. Thankfully, there is a car ferry across the entrance.
Greg from OZ.
You might want to compare it to Avacha Bay in Kamchatka. The bay is listed at 216 square kilometers and contains the port of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky and the main port for the Russian pacific fleet at Vilyuchinsk.
Definitely the biggest harbour called Cork in the world? Or the biggest Irish harbour in the world? Maybe the second biggest in three dimensions, depth width, length?
The biggest between England and The west coast of Ireland?
Forgive me I am South African. Cape Town is the biggest within 500miles and second biggest within 1500 miles. Cork is the biggest with lepricorns resident on its banks?
If you look a charts the Halifax Harbour starts from when the shore starts in eastern passage more specifically Harlan’s point down to sambro island
*im not trying to be rube but I’ve lived here for a while and have some real pride in our history and harbour and I noticed that you had cut the size of the harbour nearly in half with what you used as your model
That’s ok, and thanks for the feedback on this. I’m no expert on Halifax so I’ll gladly take this on board. From the maps it looks really beautiful, and very comparable with Cork. A lot of old military islands too – George’s Island looks remarkably similar to Spike Island in Cork Harbour. Somewhere to visit in days to come, I hope.
Reblogged this on Irish history, folklore and all that.
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“Still beats Dublin though”… And that’s all that matters….
Isn’t it the second largest ‘natrually generated’ harbour in the world? Not just the second largest in the world?
I don’t think it comes close as a natural harbour as there are plenty of natural harbours that are much bigger. The closest I have seen is “second largest by navigable area”, but I don’t buy that either.
Most of Cork’s harbour is very naturally generated. That meaning, it’s mostly man-made. Sorry guys. ;-;
Very interesting article, and lot’s of research done. I’m from Cork and I suppose the best thing about any big harbour is being able to get out there and enjoy it! Oh, and by the way, if the contest is which people have the best sense of humour…? Then Cork wins that one, hands down🤔😉😃
The key here is in the wording. Natural and harbour. Not estuary, fjord, not space between 2 headlands, not reclaimed, not repurposed, not a navigable sea-way, not a space where a port is at the mouth and the rest of the water inland never sees a ship from one year to the next. Always important to make like for like comparisons or at least define the terms under which the comparisons are being made.
Yes, wording is always important. To suggest, as you do, that an estuary or a fjord cannot be a harbour is ridiculous. “Harbour” implies two things – enclosure (meaning a relatively narrow entrance, and thus shelter from adverse weather), and water depth adequate for navigation by ships of at least moderate size. Virtually all the harbours listed in the article have rivers flowing into them, and can thus be classed as estuaries.
Two other points. Milford Haven in Wales, not too far from Cork, looks like a candidate not included in the list. And if Cork City were as far from its harbour mouth as Oslo is, it would be sitting in the middle of County Limerick!
Is this you Rymus ??