For those of you who DON'T know this, please copy this or commit it to memory, whichever is easier. ;-)

As of today, we are listing ships from four ports in France. LeHavre is directly across the English Channel from Portsmouth, England and is in the Bay of the Seine. Cherbourg is directly across the English Channel from Poole, England.

Boudeaux, is on the West side of France. While Bordeaux is a little inland it is easily accessible by a waterway called Gironde, right out of the Bay of Biscay which is adjacent to the Atlantic Ocean.

Marseille sits on the Gulf of Lions, in the South of France. For those of you not looking at a map, we are now in the northern part of the Mediterranean Sea.

Being totally surrounded by water, England and Scotland boast many ports. Leaving LeHavre and Cherbourg where we have just been, we can cross the English Channel and find several ports with which we are familiar. The Isle of Wight sits just off the coast of England, a tad southwest of Portsmouth, another of our ports. On the Isle of Wight is Cowes which is frequently a port of call. To get to Cowes it would appear to me that the ship would have to leave the English Channel and go through what is called The Solent Spirithead, it is a narrow waterway between the mainland of England and the Isle of Wight. From The Solent Spirithead, there is a waterway north to Southampton, from which many of our ships sailed.

The entire southern coast of England has many ports, Weymouth being one that we list. Weymouth is West of the Isle of Wight and slightly NW of Cherbourg, France. Sitting on Weymouth Bay makes it easy to find. Picture yourself looking across the English Channel from the balcony of an expensive French hotel. The cool breeze blows the sheer curtains and the smell of the salty air...okay, okay. Torquay sits West of Weymouth and East of Plymouth in Tor Bay. If we row around the Prawle Point and up into Whitesand Bay we could dock at Plymouth. Just a stones throw North of Plymouth, I find Devonport (perhaps our Port of Devon). Please keep in mind that I do not possess a Maritime atlas yet and I am not a geography teacher.

While we are still in England, or just off the southern coast, I will tell you that London is pretty much East and a wee bit North from where we are. To get there by ship <you guys row, I'll work the rudder>...we would have to row back out into the English Channel, proceed East to the Strait of Dover, navigate around a little tip on England, head North to Mouth of the Thames and then take a waterway to London.

Let's head up to London. We are in the Strait of Dover, heading slightly Northeast and getting our sea legs. To the left we can see Dover and slightly NE of Dover is Deal. We are going to wave to the folks as we pass, sail around Ramsgate and Margate and head into the Mouth of the Thames. Heading inland we first arrive at Gravesend and then we continue on to London.

Had we not sailed into the Mouth of the Thames and continued on up the coast of the North Sea, we would eventually arrive at Great Yarmouth. Not having been there personally, neither can I say what is great about it, nor if this is the same as the Port of Yarmouth from which some of our ships sailed. I expect some of our UK volunteers may be able to advise me on this point. Having said that, we will continue on to Hull which is located on the East side of England, inland on an unnamed waterway. Well, I am sure it has a name but not in this atlas.

We will pass the waterway which would take us to Hull and continue on to Scarborough. Just North of Scarborough is Stockton on the Tees (perhaps our Port of Stockton), and North of that, Sunderland and Newcastle on the Tyne (perhaps our Port of Newcastle).

Since we're on the North Sea and the weather looks good, we will head up to my country and stop at Dundee and St. Andrews, Scotland in the Firth of Tay. Having no ancestors from Dundee, I wish all sails at full mast and we will be in Aberdeen in no time. I believe Aberdeen to be our northern most Scottish port.

Rather than sailing back to where we have just been, I suggest we catch a rail across the country and check out our ports on the West side of Scotland. It will be a wonderful opportunity to go through the Highlands where some of my own people came from.

On the West side of Scotland we have several ports, Glasgow being the biggest. Assuming we are back on the water, we would have to get there through the North Channel, and the Firth of Clyde, passing Androssan and Greenock which are also two of our ports and then navigate on the River Clyde to Glasgow. I also see Clydebank which may be an older name for the Port of Clyde, another of our ports. I have been unable to locate Cromarty, Galloway, Leith, Loch Laxford and South Uist in this atlas.

The North Channel separates Scotland and Northern Ireland. As we make our way back out of the Firth of Clyde, we can go directly across the North Channel and stop at Larne, Northern Ireland if we wish, and many ships from Glasgow did, indeed, call at Larne, Northern Ireland. The State Line Steamship Company, Ltd. has several ships named SS State of (name of state) which frequently departed Glasgow and called at Larne.

For now, we will finish up with our English ports before we head over to the Emerald Isle. We'll head down the North Channel and into the Irish Sea. The seas are rough here as they are in the English Channel so we will have dried salt to contend with once the sun dries the water which has splashed upon our decks. We will head South toward Liverpool, perhaps one of our most frequently used ports. From Liverpool we would have to take some smaller waterways to Manchester. Those waterways are unnamed in my atlas. To get from Liverpool to some of our other ports, we must sail around the country of Wales. Coming into the Bristol Channel and on into the Mouth of the Severn, we arrive at Cardiff, Wales from which a few of our ships sailed. The Mouth of the Severn is a fair-sized waterway by which we can reach Bristol, England and Newport, Wales. Just a short distance from Bristol, we find Avon at the mouth of what I believe is the Avon River, hence the Port of Avonmouth. Sailing further up the Mouth of the Severn a good distance we will arrive at Gloucester, England.

There are several ports in England I cannot locate in my atlas. If you can help me locate them, please let me know. They are: Kensington, Northumberland and Yorkshire.

And now on to Northern Ireland. In addition to Larne in Northern Ireland we also find the port of Derry, known also as Londonderry. We would reach Derry by sailing around the top of Northern Ireland. Tucked away between the Sperrin Mountains of Northern Ireland and the Mountains of Donnegal, Derry seems to be accessible by way of Lough Foyle, in the NW part of the country. We will also find Newry and Coleraine in the same general area. Moville is some 15 miles north of Lisahally, Northern Ireland. It is in Ulster, the northernmost part of Ireland, located slightly inland on the western shore of the Lough of Foyle. If you look at a map of its location in relation to Glasgow, Scotland, it is only a short distance west of where a ship would sail from Glasgow via North Channel into the Atlantic, thus a logical place to pick up passengers from Ireland.

South of Larne, down the North Channel and inland via another unnamed waterway we will find Belfast, Northern Ireland.

On the Emerald Isle we have several ports. Dublin which is almost directly across the Irish Sea from Liverpool. New Ross is almost at Ireland's southeastern most point in St. George's Channel and Waterford just to the West. Continuing in a westerly direction, we sail into Youghal Bay and then into Cork Harbor where we find both Cobh (also knows as Queenstown) and Cork. Many ships leaving Liverpool also called at Cobh which means Cove in Gaelic; it is located in SE County Cork.

Occasionally we see Tralee and Galway, Ireland as ports of departure or call. Tralee is located along the Western coast of Ireland in an unnamed bay and just below the mouth of the Shannon River <well, I guess it's the mouth...I didn't want to type the other end> and Limerick further up the Shannon. Galway, Ireland is North of Tralee on the same side of the island. Just sail North to the Aran Islands and into Galway Bay and there you are, a beautiful area to be sure.

I believe Sligo in Sligo Bay is our northern most Irish port on the West side of Ireland.

Liverpool may have seemed like a likely stop when leaving from Glasgow, but it wasn't. I haven't seen one Glasgow to Liverpool run yet. I suspect this was because the waters of the North Channel and the Irish Sea can be especially treacherous. Many ships have been lost to storms in that area.

Many of our ports don't appear to be right on the coast, but they are inland a ways. Since harbors need to be located in protected, deep-water places, many are on estuaries, a geographical term. During the Ice Ages, the sea level was a lot lower than it is now, and the rivers flowed down to this lower sea. When the glaciers melted, the oceans rose and flooded these lower river mouths, creating estuaries. Most estuaries are well-protected and have deep water, making them ideal port sites, but they look like they are inland from the sea. In the U.S., Chesapeake and Delaware Bays are estuaries (Baltimore and Philadelphia), and a good case could be made for the ports of New York, San Francisco, and Charleston also. Not surprisingly, many larger ports in Northwestern Europe are on estuaries also. What we know as "fjords" and "firths" are also estuaries.

Okay...we also have ships leaving Bremen, Germany and Bremerhaven, Germany...which should not be confused with each other. They are both on the Weser River with Bremerhaven at the mouth and Bremen a bit farther upstream.

Northeast from Bremen, Germany, Hamburg is at the upper end of the Elbe River estuary. Just so you don't lose your bearings here, if you left Hamburg and were in the North Sea you could sail pretty much due West and run right into Hull, England assuming you wanted to go there.

Stettin, Germany is another port we will see listed. It is now Szczecin, Poland. Getting out of Stettin appears to be no easy task. You would have to navigate some small waterways to the Stettin Lagoon and then more before you reached the Baltic Sea where you would be just slightly SE of Sweden. Not a port that I would expect to be used much in the cold winter months. I don't know that the Baltic Sea would freeze, but I would think the Stettin Lagoon would contain much ice in the coldest months of the year. I have been unable to locate Altona which is also listed as a German port.

West of Germany, we have Netherlands and south of Netherlands we find Belgium. We have many ships leaving Antwerp, Belgium which in my atlas is called Antwerpen. Antwerp or Antwerpen is not on the coast either but inland a tad, accessible from the Wester Schelde, a river that begins way up in France. It appears to be a distance of around 25 miles <give or take>. The Wester Schelde flows from or into the Strait of Dover which is again between the English Channel and the North Sea. Ghent, Belgium (Gent in this atlas) is quite a distance inland from the Strait of Dover

Let's pop up to Netherlands now <PBS's Rick Steeves voice talking>. We have ships leaving from Rotterdam and Amsterdam, Netherlands. For those of you who know porcelain, Rotterdam is just South <not quite due South> of Delft, and more importantly, so is Schiedam which is also one of our ports. Rotterdam and Schiedam are very, very close neighbors. Leaving Rotterdam which is inland of Schiedam, you would pass Schiedam so you could wave to all your friends, and enter the southern part of the North Sea.

Amsterdam is about 30-35 miles northeast of of Rotterdam as the crow flys but by water is much farther. If you were leaving Amsterdam, Netherlands, you would sail North in a rather zig-zag pattern up through Zuider Zee, then Wadden Zee and cut through the West Frisian Islands and into the North Sea. All of these German, Dutch, and Belgian ports lie on waters that lead into the North Sea.

We are narrowing down the ports here, my friends. Denmark (north of Germany) is not one continual piece of land and also holds a port of ours which is Copenhagen. My atlas shows "Köenhavn" which is actually on an island to the East of mainland Denmark, called Sjaelland ...<humor me, I am learning so much>...and from Copenhagen one would essentially sail North, through what is called Kattegat, right up to Göteborg, Sweden. To get to the North Sea from Göteborg, proceed West through the waterway called Skagerrak and from there you're pretty much free to go wherever you want to. We have had ships from Norway it seems but the port of departure has been listed as Göteborg which is actually in Sweden. <Confused? Me too>

Two other Swedish ports we have listed are Gavle and Stockholm. Stockholm sits sheltered by many islands between it and the northern Baltic Sea and Gavle is North of Stockholm in the Gulf of Bothnia.
The Baltic Sea splits into the Gulf of Bothnia and the Gulf of Finland. It is through the Gulf of Finland that we can reach our only Russian port, Kronstadt (which is often spelled Cronstadt).

We have also come to see a few ports of departure in Spain. They are Barcelona, Cartagena, Malaga and Cadiz. Barcelona and Cartagena sit on the Mediterranean Sea. Malaga is in southern Spain in the Gulf of Malaga and we proceed West through the Strait of Gibraltar to get to Cadiz. With the Mediterranean on the coast of Spain, many of the ports we see simply listed as Mediterranean Ports could include Spanish or Italian ports.

Let's not leave out the Italian ports. To simplify, Livorno Italy (also known as Leghorn, Italy) is on the West side of the "boot" (just above the kneecap if Genova or Genoa as it is also called is the hip and Rome is just below the kneecap) and is on the Ligurian Sea. Naples, Italy is another one of our ports and is written as Napoli in my atlas...shoot, this atlas may be older than me. Anyway, Naples is also on the West side of the boot, just above the ankle and is on the Tyrrhenian Sea. On the East side of the boot we can sail out into the Ionian Sea and up the Adriatic Sea into the Gulf of Venice and then the Gulf of Trieste to get to Trieste. In this atlas, Trieste is shown as part of Yugoslavia.

We also list Messina, Palermo and Catania as Italian ports on our site. This atlas shows all three as being on the Island of Sicily which it just off the toe of the boot.

From here we will sail back down to Greece where Patras is another of our ports. Patras actually sits off the mainland of Greece on an island called Peloponnesos, nestled in the Gulf of Patrai. Now, there is the possibility that all this has changed since they printed this book. ;-)...but what is more likely is that all of this changed since our ships sailed..or steamed whichever the case may be.

There are some ports which this atlas does not list. Aspinwall, a common port is listed as Colon in the United States of Columbia. There are also other ports which are listed, but for now, I think that's another lesson at another time. It's been great sailing with you.