Cherbourg Harbour

49°39′33″N 1°36′42″W / 49.659072°N 1.611729°W / 49.659072; -1.611729

You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in French. (May 2011) Click [show] for important translation instructions. View a machine-translated version of the French article. Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Consider adding a topic to this template: there are already 6,166 articles in the main category, and specifying|topic= will aid in categorization. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing French Wikipedia article at [[:fr:Rade de Cherbourg]]; see its history for attribution. You may also add the template {{Translated|fr|Rade de Cherbourg}} to the talk page. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

Cherbourg Harbour (French: rade de Cherbourg; literally, the "roadstead of Cherbourg") is a harbour situated at the northern end of the Cotentin Peninsula, on the English Channel coastline, in Normandy, northwestern France. With a surface area of 1,500 hectares, it is the second largest artificial harbour in the world, after the 4,500 hectare Ras Laffan Harbour in Qatar. As well as Cherbourg Naval Base, it has been used for mercantile shipping.

It was begun in 1783, with its central harbour breakwater completed in 1853 – this was 3.64 km long, an average of 100 m wide at its base and an average of 12 m wide at its top, and sited 4 km from the coast. Three forts were added to its central wall in 1860. This and the two other breakwaters stretch for more than 6 km. The eastern opening into the harbour is 950 m wide and the western one 2.3 km wide. The harbour's maximum depth is 13 m at low tide.

History

Cherbourg had been a strategic stronghold for several centuries - its castle was first built in the 5th century to protect the whole width of the

The long-planned fortification of the town was finally set in motion by

Works on the central wall were again interrupted between 1813 and 1832 and were only finally completed in 1853 under

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  Fort de Chavagnac

Fort de l'Est

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  Fort de l'Est, destroyed during the Second World War

Fort de l'Ouest

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  Fort de l'Ouest

Central fort

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  Fort Central

Fort de Querqueville

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  Entrance to the Fort de Querqueville
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  The casemates of Fort de Querqueville

Fort des Flamands

Gallery

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  Western wall of the outer harbour
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  View of the harbour from the cemetery at Querqueville
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  View of the harbour from the cemetery at Querqueville

Citations

General bibliography

• (In French) Bazan, "Quels sont les hommes qui ont exercé le plus d'influence sur la création d'un arsenal maritime à Cherbourg et en particulier quelle part doit être attribuée à Vauban dans les projets relatifs à la fermeture de la rade", extract from Séances du congrès scientifique de France, tenu à Cherbourg en septembre 1860. Cherbourg : Auguste Mouchel, 1860. 16 pages
• (In French) Yves Murie, La Digue qui a fait Cherbourg. Cherbourg, Isoète, 2007 -
  ISBN 978-2-913920-59-0

Wikimedia Commons has media related to la rade de Cherbourg.

• (In French) « Les forts de la rade de Cherbourg ( 50 ) », Les Chemins de la mémoire,
• (In French) « Les forts de la rade de Cherbourg  », Netmarine
• (In French) Forts de la grande rade de Cherbourg
• (In French) La grande rade, ville de Cherbourg-Octeville
• (In French) Situation de la Passe Cabart-Danneville^{[permanent dead link]}