The Port of Boulogne-sur-Mer is a seaport located on the western coast of the Hauts-de-France region, on the edge of the Pas de Calais, the world's busiest strait for international shipping. It is France's leading fishing port, with a diversified fleet of almost 150 boats. It was also an important link port with England until the end of the 20th century.
It became a “regional port” in 2007 as part of the port decentralization.
Tidal range Due to the configuration of the Strait, the tidal range (difference in height between high and low tide) in this port is the highest in the region: 8 meters on average at Boulogne-sur-Mer (compared with 5.2 at Dunkirk).
Port history
This ancient Liane estuary was occupied in prehistoric times, as evidenced by the skulls of prehistoric men (Cro-Magnon, according to their 19th-century discoverers) found in the port of Boulogne.
The port of Boulogne-sur-Mer is one of the former strategic ports of the Pas de Calais and northern France (formerly a military and fishing port), and a departure base for potential landings in France or to England from France.
Legend has it that in the year 633 or 636, during the reign of King Dagobert, a ship without oars or sailors entered the port of Boulogne in unusually calm weather. According to legend, it was illuminated and contained a wooden relief Virgin Mary “of excellent carving, about three and a half feet high, holding the infant Jesus on her left arm, at the origin of a pilgrimage still alive in the 19th century”, according to Abbé . Local tradition also has it that this vessel contained a relic of Christ and another of the Virgin Mary, along with a handwritten Bible, said to have been enshrined by Saint Éloy, Bishop of Noyon. Various illuminations, engravings, seals, etc. have alluded to this religious legend.
In the 18th century, the port of Boulogne was a major center for maritime smuggling with England, known as smogglage or smoglage, particularly for tea, wine and brandy exports.
It also played a role in controlling the level of the Liane, thanks to a lock that became known as the “Pont-Barrage Marguet” lock.
In the 20th century, Boulogne gradually became an industrial and passenger port, as well as a marina, a period during which the port was affected by both world wars. On July 6, 1903, the President of the Republic, Émile Loubet, laid the 1st stone of the tidal basin.
While lighthouses are tending to disappear in Europe, the Boulogne lighthouse is still in operation.
The Quai de l'Europe (800 m), created in 1967, is accessible without a lock to 230-meter ships with 34-foot (11-meter) berths.
The port specializes in forestry/paper products, but has a storage area of almost 500,000 m3, and can also handle cement, aggregates and riprap produced in the Boulonnais region.
It benefits from several motorway access points (A16, A26) but, unlike Calais and Dunkirk, is not connected to the canal network.
Its industrial vocation diminished in 2004 with the closure of the Comilog plant, whose blast furnacesComilog is a subsidiary of Eramet, a world-class mining and metallurgical group. The Boulogne plant produced ferromanganese for the steel industry. had previously contributed significantly to the port's industrial activity. As a result of the plant's closure, the port fell back to 20th place among metropolitan commercial ports (2005 figures).
The freeing-up of the former Comilog plant in October 2007 enabled the Boulogne-sur-Mer Côte d'Opale Chamber of Commerce and Industry, then managing the port, to dispose of part of the land to extend the seafood processing industry zone. The second part, covering some 20 hectares, saw the inauguration on September 19, 2009, of a new freight-passenger terminal featuring a double-deck, double-lane gangway capable of adapting to the width of all types of ship. This new facility can accommodate ships over 200 m long, which make up the bulk of the cross-Channel fleet and the ro-ro fleet in general. It also marks the creation of a “hub port” (so named because it is the meeting point of three modes of transport: sea, road and rail), the initial aim of which was to develop freight services for the seafood industry, enabling the loyalty and development of foreign fish deliveries to Boulogne. Indeed, every year, 85% of the 380,000 tonnes of seafood products shipped to the Port of Boulogne are imported by road. Shipments from Boulogne to Southern Europe are made in the same way.
The port also boasts a shipbuilding business, Socarenam.
The port, which covers a total area of almost 820 hectares in the communes of Boulogne, Le Portel and Outreau, remains France's leading fishing port.
The Marguet Dam Bridge Located in Place Frédéric-Sauvage, Pont-Barrage Marguet takes its name from the engineer Pierre Joseph Marguet (1785-1870), who designed it (with Peyronnet) in the mid-19th century. It was rebuilt in the mid-20th century.
It replaces a “service bridge” and replaced the old lock that was located further downstream at the beginning of the 19th century Album monumental et archéologie, based on a project drawn up in 1845 by P.J. Marguet, and was inaugurated by Napoleon III himself on September 28, 1853. It was restored between 1955 and 1958, following a bridge collapse in May 1955, and re-inaugurated in June 1959.
This dam plays an important role as a gateway to the sea, via the Frédéric Sauvage reservoir. Conversely, it also helps to conserve water in the Liane during low-water periods, perhaps by reducing the risk of nocturnal asphyxia of fish in a context of eutrophication and anoxia. This dam on the liana has limited the effects of flushing, which is a source of worsening siltation in the port. De-silting operations are periodically necessary.
It is designed to limit the introduction of tides into the lower Liane valley and within the Boulogne-sur-mer urban area; it evacuates floods (at ebb tide or if the level of the Liane is higher than that of the sea). By regulating the water level in the marina (upstream of the dam), it facilitates yachting and other nautical activities.
The “central pass” of the Marguet dam used to have a fixed section, which was replaced in the 2000s by a double gate to increase the speed of flood discharge when necessary (the maximum discharge rate of the river during low-water periods was tripled). However, its opening has little influence on flood discharge upstream of Boulogne-sur-mer (Wirwignes...). It is considered a major obstacle to the upstream migration of migratory fish, yet the Liane is home to a very large eel population.
Fishing port
From the 1850s onwards, industrial fishing in Boulogne was organized around a few shipowning families. By 1868, more than half of all drifters were owned by 4 fishing companies: Vidor, Huret-Dupuis, and Ancel-Joly. These pioneers developed the industry considerably, drawing inspiration from the English model. In 1894, Bouclet and then Vidor acquired the first steam-powered herring boats. As a result, steam-powered herring boats were no longer produced from 1905 onwards.
At the beginning of the 20th century, Boulogne was France's leading port in terms of tonnage landed. Herring made its fortune, with over 30,000 tonnes landed in 1921 (equivalent to fifty million francs at the time). These herring were netted in the English Channel/North Sea from July to the end of January by Boulonnais drifters, and also fished by trawlers sent to the Small's region, south-west of Ireland and west of the Bristol Channel, from July to December.
To supply its salting and curing plants all year round, the Boulogne herring industry nevertheless had to import herring from abroad (mainly Norway) to meet its needs (particularly from August to February, with, for example, in 1924, 185 tons of fresh herring in ice and 8,575 tons of salted herring imported between January 1 and August 31, 1924, for Boulogne and Fécamp).
In Boulogne, as elsewhere in Europe, small-scale fishing from the late 19th century onwards, followed by industrial fishing, had to cope with the depletion of certain fish stocks as a result of overfishing, and probably later exacerbated by global warming and pollution.
After record Norwegian herring catches (in 1919, an exceptional year, 4,861,556 hectoliters of herring were landed and sold in Norway, worth 78,731,889 kroner), at the request of the “Syndicat des Armateurs boulonnais”, experts were sent to study Norwegian fishing techniques, and the possibility of Boulonnais herring fishermen going to Norway to fish on the Viking Bank (with drift nets or tidal nets).Paris (this is the report of a mission to study fishing techniques in Norway, carried out at the request of the “Syndicat des Armateurs boulonnais” to study the possibility for the Boulonnais herring industry to fish herring directly in Norway instead of importing it).
Today, optimizing the value of catches, diversifying the use of wild resources and developing aquaculture are among the themes addressed by the Aquimer national competitiveness cluster.
In 2008, 47,000 tonnes of fish were landed (-5.7% on 2007), including 37,309 tonnes landed at port (valued at around 83 million euros) and 10,075 tonnes processed at sea by three Euronor freezer trawlers. This decrease can be explained in part by the decommissioning of one of Euronor's six fresh fishing boats, by the protection of spawning stocks (cod quotas) and by the “biological stoppages” of part of the fleet in summer and winter 2008. However, at the end of 2008, the European Fisheries Ministers granted a 30% increase in cod catches in the North Sea and Eastern Channel, where trawlers from Boulonnais are active, and fishermen are allowed to keep dead fish that are undersized or not authorized for fishing, but in exchange fishermen must limit their days at sea (from 180 to 150 days).
In 2010, almost 45,000 tonnes of fish were counted, including 35,964 tonnes landed at the port and 8,934 tonnes frozen at sea (Euronor).
In November 2008, the regional council announced the creation of a fishing mission with “an audit for the Port of Boulogne's fishing platform strategy for the next 10 to 15 years”.
In 2009, a “Capécure-Bis” was set up on 14 ha (out of a total of 40) of the former Comilog industrial wasteland (the plant was closed in December 2003). These installations have been delayed by 6 months due to the extra time needed to clean up the Comilog site.
Between 2000 and 2013, the fishing port will benefit from a €35 million modernization program. In both cases, High Environmental Quality criteria are announced, as well as a green corridor on the activity zone.
In 2015, the Port of Boulogne remained France's leading fishing port (in terms of tonnage landed) ahead of Lorient, despite a significant decline (50,965 tons in 2001, 43,952 tons in 2006, 36,096 tons in 2012 and 35,850 tons in 2015).
In 2020, the Port of Boulogne was France's leading fishing port, with a tonnage of 27,859 tonnes.
Quantity of fish caught in the port of Boulogne-sur-Mer (in tonnes) Sources:
According to the portboulognecalais website, in 2023 the fishing port of Boulogne-sur-Mer had 89.1 millions of euros in value terms (up 2%), it has even reached its highest level for 20 years for the second year running. Fish volumes are up by 8% compared with 2022, and have passed the symbolic 30,000 tonnes threshold (30,437 t), returning to their pre-Brexit level. The drop in catches of certain species such as sole, mackerel and whiting has been offset by ever greater volumes of cephalopods (squid and cuttlefish), red mullet and scallops, whose stocks are in excellent condition. The port of Boulogne-sur-Mer remains the leading French fishing port in terms of tonnage and value.
Cross-Channel port