Seaports In India

Chennai Port

The second largest port of India was formerly known as Madras ort which now has been renamed as Chennai Port. This port comes next to the Mumbai Port and is also the largest port in Bay of Bengal. Ranking this port among the 12 major ports of India this port is ranked as the third port which declares it to be quite an old port. This port was build some 125 years back despite of the fact that the maritime trade started only in 1639. The port has the wet docks and is also known as the artificial port and is also suitable for all the weather conditions so it is named as all-weather port.This port has a major contribution in the economic growth in Tamil Nadu, the South of India.The port has benefited its city not only economically but also has a role played in its development.This port has given name to the city it belongs to and the city of Chennai is also termed as Gateway of South India.For the east coast of India this port has acted as one of the major pivot for the containers, cars and cargos. The port defines itself with 3 wharfs and 24 quays.The port also has the water drafts reaching from 12 to 16.5 meters. In its initial days the port was capable of handling only very scanty number of cargos.The cargo business through this port mainly consisted importing of oil and motors. The export of products like groundnuts, granite and ores is done through this port.With the development on this port the cargo capacity of the port has increased to 60 million with the growing years. This port has received its certification for ISO and has been certified as ISO 14001:2004 certification. The port is also ISPS certification. In the year 2008 the port reached a marking of almost 1 million twenty-foot TEU.The world ranking of this port is 86 and with the approaching years the capacity of the port is expected to grow to almost 140 million tons per annum.

The Port of Chennai is now connected to 50 main line ports directly.

History

A village named as the Chenna Patnam, which was found in 1639 in the eighteenth century during the days of East India Company that was operational in the East Coast became very conspicuous. The Masula boats were used for the movement of the cargos from ship to the shore as there was no harbor near the port which resulted in unloading of the cargo almost a quarter a mile from the shore. Due to the time loss because of the transportation of the cargos through the small lighter boats Masula it was later decided that a quay should be build that will be capable of holding the large number of cargos and the implementation of the building an Iron screw pile landing stage was done in 1861. This was 1100ft long and was builtvertically upright to the coast in November 1881 but due to the fierce cyclones that occurred and caused both materialistic and human loss. The restoration work for the same was done in 1885 but there were also the proposals for shifting the way of the entrance.

Till the year 1875, the port of Chennai that was named Madras port at that time, has been an open roadstead and was a sandy shore due to the violent storms.

In the 1904 Sir Francis Spring who was the Chairman of the Madras Port declared of opening a new way through the North-eastern way thus shutting the initial Easter entrance. This further resulted in creating new dwarfs over a period of time.The South dwarf-I was built in 1913 while the work for South dwarf-II was done in 1936 using the Inner harbour that was later named as the Dr. Ambedkar Dock. There we five dwarfs built in the West through 1916 to 1920 while the work of building a dwarf in North was done in 1931.

Shri Lal Bahadur Shastri who was Prime Minister of India in 1964 inaugurated the newly constructed wet dock November 6th in 1964. The wet dock “The Jawahar Dock” was named after the name of first Prime Minister of India Shri Jawaharlal Nehru.

The outer harbour on the Bharathi dock was constructed so as to handle a vessel of upto (-)16.2 meters. The Crude oil that was imported from the Manali Oil Refinery which is now known as the Chennai Petroleum Corporation Ltd. Was built on an old jetty in the starting of the year 1970. This same dock has a quay to handle the Iron Ore and this was done by the year 1974. The Iron Ore was then exported to japan and the other Far East countries. To support the further demand of the crude and other products there was another oil jetty built up in the year 1985.

In the year 1970 then known as the Madras Port initiated themselves for handling more number of containers in the Inner Harbor. With the increase in the container traffic there were constructions done on the Bharathi dock like construction of 380 meter container terminal. Throughout 1983 the Bharathi dock was fully operational for the activity of the full-fledged Container hub that was capable of handling the storage of 51000 sq. meter containers and a freight station for the containers with an area of six thousand sq. meters. The container terminal was self-sufficient in its operations and had a 2 shore cranes.

The infrastructure of the terminal was also enhanced up to 220 meter in the year 1991 and the two new shore cranes were created. With the further increase in the container traffic on the terminal the terminal was increased in 285 meter of the length in July in the year 2002. This job of the new increase in the area of 885 meter along with some backup area was given to a private organization M/s. Chennai Container Terminal Private Ltd., on BOT basis which will last for 30 years and was started from November 2001.

In the year 1966 on the day of 30th September Madras was officially renamed as Chennai. With this renaming the name of the Madras Port Trust was changed to Chennai Port Trust. Since the city has numerous car manufacturing companies, the cars were exported using the facility of Pure Car Carriers (PCC) shipment.  This kind of shipments has been started from July in the year 2000.

Location

On the Coromandel Coast in the Bay of Bengal and in the east coast on the Indian Peninsula and on the plain of the Eastern Coastal plain is the Chennai port. It has an impartial flatbed slope. The port is on the coast and is very near to the thermal equator helps it from the great variations caused due to the variations in the temperature. The temperature in the month of May goes up to 42°C while in the month of January it goes to 18°C. The climatic conditions of the area are mostly wet and dry but mostly it experiences a hot and humid weather. This area has a mean temperature of 29.3°C in December and 39.6°C in the month of May. The rainfall in the area has its impact due to the northeast monsoon winds and experiences the rain during the months of September to December. The coast is also impacted by the cyclone occurring in the bay of Bengal.The range of the annual rainfall in this area during the months of June to September is 443.5 mm caused by the southwest monsoons, then in the months of October to December the average is 753.1 mm because of the north-east monsoon and in the winters months from January to February it experiences average rainfall of 37.3 mm.The months of summer from March to May get an average rainfall of 64.2 mm.

Construction

The port of Chennai has been the second smallest port with an surface area of just 274 hectares. The port areas in Chennai have been divided into 3 zones that are north, central and south and an additional fishing harbor is also allocated. The port is surrounded by 26 wharfs that includes a quay that is 21 meter in depth and the 2 oil jetties that are the part of 3 major docks named as ., Dr. Ambedkar Dock, Satabt Jawahar Dock, and Bharathi Dock and also has the container terminal and the wafts that ranges from 12 to 16.5 meters. The berths on the., Dr. Ambedkar Dock, Satabt Jawahar Dock, and Bharathi Dock are 12, 6 and 3 respectively while the container terminal constitutes of 3 berths. The moornings have 1 berth. These wharfs are capable of holding the cargoes that are either liquid or dry and can store them in bulk amount. The length of the channel that approaches the port is 6700 meters in length while the turning basin is 560 meters in length. The channels approaching have 9 well lighted floats.

The maximum capacity that is tolerable for the Jawahar dock is 10.4 Meter and 11 meter. This dock has total six numbers of quays that goes upto a length of 1310 meters. Each of the quays is around 218.3 meters in length and has the maximum capacity of 10.4 meters. These docks are used for the storage of coal, fertilizers, iron ore lumps, edible oils and the phosphoric acid. Coming to Dr Ambedkar Dock It consists of a total number of 13 quays with a 8.5 to 12 meters of permissible capacity. The sum of the lengths of the Dr Ambedkar dock is around 1676 meters in which the longest quay is of 246 meters in length and the capacity of this is 9.5 meters. The statistics of the quays on the Dr Ambedkar dock goes as follow Quay numbered as 7 is 198 meters in length with the capacity of 8.5 meters, for quay number 8 to 12 it is 170.6 meters each in length and the maximum capacity goes to 11 meter. Berth marked as 14 is 179 meters long and the capacity of this is 9.5 meters.The quay number 18 and 19 has been solely assigned for the naval base. This dock mainly handles the cargo, cars, granite steel and food grains. It mainly has the terminals for the cars and the cruise. The third dock is the Bharathi dock with the wharf that is 917.2 meters in length. This dock has a total number of three quays which are 274.3 meters in length. The capacity of these quays is 16.5 to 338.9 meters in length and 14.6 meters od draft. The three terminals of this dock are named as container terminal, iron ore terminal and the oil terminal depending on their operational function. The quays in this dock are made to handle the containers, iron ore and the petroleum, oil and lubricants.

Facilities

Oil Terminals (BD1 & BD3)

• BD1 and BD2 were commissioned in the year 1972 and 1986 respectively.
• Maximum and Miminum LOA of Tankers at BD - I & BD - III - 280.4m and 108.15m respectively.

Iron ORE Terminal (BD2)

• This was commissioned in 1977 for handling Ore of maximum size 1,45,000 DWT
• The loading of ore is done at the rate of 6000 Tons per hour.

Auxiliary Functions

Meteorological Functions

In the Centenary building of the administrative building is the Cyclone detection radar stationthat works for the Southern Regional Meteorological Centre. The structure of this building is on the top of a 53 meter high building above the sea level. The dome that constitutes this is 18 tons in weight.The scan area for the radar is 500 km in radius.This same building has the office of the Port Meteorological.

The ships of the Merchant Navy, Indian Navy and those of the foreign agencies are maintained by the India Meteorological Department via Voluntary Observing Fleet. They collect the real-time basis data from the ocean area to help them for keeping the forecast and climatic conditions for the smooth operations on the port.The department is completely responsible for maintaining the records of the climatic conditions.

Disease Control

To prevent the admittance of the yellow fever and other infectious diseases from any foreign country a Port Health Organization, Chennai that functioned under the Director General of Health Services, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India was formed in the year 1946.The Chennai Port Trust and the Port Health Organization are taking all the actions to make the port area Mosquito free. The Port Health Organization has taken the responsibility of issuing the certificated for Yellow fever and all the preventive measure for making the port as anti-mosquito port.

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