An old Anglo-Saxon word still in full use. It strictly means a place of resort for vessels, adjacent to an emporium of commerce, where cargoes are bought and sold, or laid up in warehouses, and where there are docks for shipping. It is not quite a synonym of harbour, since the latter does not imply traffic. Vessels hail from the port they have quitted, but they are compelled to have the name of the vessel and of the port to which they belong painted on the bow or stern.
♦ Port is also in a legal sense a refuge more or less protected by points and headlands, marked out by limits, and may be resorted to as a place of safety, though there are many ports but rarely entered. The left side of the ship is called port, by admiralty order, in preference to larboard, as less mistakeable in sound for starboard.
♦ To port the helm. So to move the tiller as to carry the rudder to the starboard side of the stern-post.
♦ Bar-port. One which can only be entered when the tide rises sufficiently to afford depth over a bar; this in many cases only occurs at spring-tides.
♦ Close-port. One within the body of a city, as that of Rhodes, Venice, Amsterdam, &c.
♦ Free-port. One open and free of all duties for merchants of all nations to load and unload their vessels, as the ports of Genoa and Leghorn. Also, a term used for a total exemption of duties which any set of merchants enjoy, for goods imported into a state, or those exported of the growth of the country. Such was the privilege the English enjoyed for several years after their discovery of the port of Archangel, and which was taken from them on account of the regicide in 1648.