The Port of Dives-sur-Mer, ''Port de Dives-sur-Mer'', is the

harbour A harbor (American English), harbour (British English; see spelling differences), or haven is a sheltered body of water where ships, boats, and barges can be docked. The term ''harbor'' is often used interchangeably with ''port'', which is a ...

of the

Norman Norman or Normans may refer to: Ethnic and cultural identity * The Normans, a people partly descended from Norse Vikings who settled in the territory of Normandy in France in the 10th and 11th centuries ** People or things connected with the Norm ...

town of

Dives-sur-Mer Dives-sur-Mer (, literally ''Dives on Sea''; nrf, Dives sus Mé) is a commune in the Calvados department in Normandy in northwestern France. History It was from harbour of Dives-sur-Mer that William the Conqueror set out on the Norman Conquest o ...

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...

. It is from this harbour that

William the Conqueror William I; ang, WillelmI (Bates ''William the Conqueror'' p. 33– 9 September 1087), usually known as William the Conqueror and sometimes William the Bastard, was the first House of Normandy, Norman List of English monarchs#House of Norman ...

left for

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

to claim the throne.

History

The river Dives' estuary used to be larger than it is now. A large head of land protects the natural haven and gives adequate protection to light craft from the

sea The sea, connected as the world ocean or simply the ocean, is the body of salty water that covers approximately 71% of the Earth's surface. The word sea is also used to denote second-order sections of the sea, such as the Mediterranean Sea, ...

William William is a male given name of Germanic origin.Hanks, Hardcastle and Hodges, ''Oxford Dictionary of First Names'', Oxford University Press, 2nd edition, , p. 276. It became very popular in the English language after the Norman conquest of Engl ...

chose the port of Dives as the starting point of his campaign to claim the throne of England. The port has always been known as a thriving port and under

Louis XIV , house = Bourbon , father = Louis XIII , mother = Anne of Austria , birth_date = , birth_place = Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France , death_date = , death_place = Palace of Vers ...

, one of his ministers Colbert, decided, in 1676 to begin remodel the area. During the 13th century, the port of Dives was a commercial place for Spanish and Portuguese merchants, their trade in leathers and wine from Cordoba interested the monks of the Saint-Etienne abbey of

Caen Caen (, ; nrf, Kaem) is a commune in northwestern France. It is the prefecture of the department of Calvados. The city proper has 105,512 inhabitants (), while its functional urban area has 470,000,Dives was modified. During the many centuries of war between France and England, the port showed a strategic and military importance. Several naval battles occurred outside the port. On 29 May 1798, the

frigate A frigate () is a type of warship. In different eras, the roles and capabilities of ships classified as frigates have varied somewhat. The name frigate in the 17th to early 18th centuries was given to any full-rigged ship built for speed and ...

''la Confiante'' and the

corvette A corvette is a small warship. It is traditionally the smallest class of vessel considered to be a proper (or " rated") warship. The warship class above the corvette is that of the frigate, while the class below was historically that of the slo ...

''la Vésuve'', having left

Le Havre Le Havre (, ; nrf, Lé Hâvre ) is a port city in the Seine-Maritime department in the Normandy region of northern France. It is situated on the right bank of the estuary of the river Seine on the Channel southwest of the Pays de Caux, very cl ...

were pursued by three English ships and tried to gain shelter in the port of Dives. To prevent them from doing so, the English ships began to fire on the French for five hours. Finally, ''la Confiante'', having sustained heavy damage, ran ashore on the pointe de Beuzeval, where it was burnt down. Around 1860, project to enlarge the port came to fruition. Activity increased. In 1881, the port's registry logged 203 ship movements. Ships with a

draft Draft, The Draft, or Draught may refer to: Watercraft dimensions * Draft (hull), the distance from waterline to keel of a vessel * Draft (sail), degree of curvature in a sail * Air draft, distance from waterline to the highest point on a vessel ...

of up to 4 m regularly used the port which had 29 registered fishing boats. The port was then used by all types of ships, fishing, sailing and

Cabotage Cabotage () is the transport of goods or passengers between two places in the same country. It originally applied to shipping along coastal routes, port to port, but now applies to aviation, railways, and road transport as well. Cabotage rights ar ...

. The site as we know it today was built between 1845 and 1859, and modified in 1880. It was a port of call for

merchant ships A merchant ship, merchant vessel, trading vessel, or merchantman is a watercraft that transports cargo or carries passengers for hire. This is in contrast to pleasure craft, which are used for personal recreation, and naval ships, which are us ...

and

fishing boat A fishing vessel is a boat or ship used to catch fish in the sea, or on a lake or river. Many different kinds of vessels are used in commercial, artisanal and recreational fishing. The total number of fishing vessels in the world in 2016 was es ...

s and also the place of

regattas Boat racing is a sport in which boats, or other types of watercraft, race on water. Boat racing powered by oars is recorded as having occurred in ancient Egypt, and it is likely that people have engaged in races involving boats and other wate ...

organised by the Count of Dramard. Sécrétan built

Tréfimétaux Tréfimétaux is a French metallurgy conglomerate formed in 1962 by the merger of the Tréfileries et Laminoirs du Havre with the Compagnie française des métaux. In 1967, Tréfimétaux was acquired by Pechiney and in 1987 was sold to the Italian ...

steel works A steel mill or steelworks is an industrial plant for the manufacture of steel. It may be an integrated steel works carrying out all steps of steelmaking from smelting iron ore to rolled product, but may also be a plant where steel semi-finis ...

inside the large

meander A meander is one of a series of regular sinuous curves in the channel of a river or other watercourse. It is produced as a watercourse erodes the sediments of an outer, concave bank ( cut bank) and deposits sediments on an inner, convex bank ...

of the Dives in 1891. Three mast sailing ships provided the works with

coal Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock, formed as rock strata called coal seams. Coal is mostly carbon with variable amounts of other elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen. Coal is formed when dea ...

from England and

copper Copper is a chemical element with the symbol Cu (from la, cuprum) and atomic number 29. It is a soft, malleable, and ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. A freshly exposed surface of pure copper has a pinkis ...

from

. As of 2006, four independent fishermen still sail from

. They sell their seafood at port of Dives'

fish market A fish market is a marketplace for selling fish and fish products. It can be dedicated to wholesale trade between fishermen and fish merchants, or to the sale of seafood to individual consumers, or to both. Retail fish markets, a type of wet mar ...

. Fish caught in the Baie de Seine range from sole to lemon sole, turbot, mackerel, bass, mussel and shrimp. Beyond the fish dock, a lock protects Port Guillaume. South of the lock is a sailing club, the CAPAC, (Comité des Amis du Plein Air du Calvados).

Port Guillaume

Port Guillaume is a pleasure harbour built in the 1990s on the site of the

. The project was initiated by the Catherine Mamet construction and leisure group and built by Toffolutti. Catherine Mamet had built the marina as well as two buildings, consisting of two 5-storey mock

residential buildings. One of the buildings, built along one of the marina's dock walls, possesses a few shops. These two buildings were the only two to be built for more than ten years until the Groupe George V took over the project at the end of the 1990s. Although the "new" project was a success, with the construction of the lighthouse and of several more houses as well as a ''private'' railway station, it received bad publicity following a television report on M6's ''

Capital Capital may refer to: Common uses * Capital city, a municipality of primary status ** List of national capital cities * Capital letter, an upper-case letter Economics and social sciences * Capital (economics), the durable produced goods used f ...

'' business program. The program described how prices had been inflated to create a buzz around the project and how the group had neglected fitting

gutter Gutter may refer to: Water discharge structures * Rain gutter, used on roofs and in buildings * Street gutter, for drainage of streets Design and printing * Gutter, in typography, the space between columns of printed text * Gutter, in bookbi ...

ing onto houses built in the notoriously rainy

Normandy Normandy (; french: link=no, Normandie ; nrf, Normaundie, Nouormandie ; from Old French , plural of ''Normant'', originally from the word for "northman" in several Scandinavian languages) is a geographical and cultural region in Northwestern ...

. The harbour is capable of berthing 600 pleasure

sailing ship A sailing ship is a sea-going vessel that uses sails mounted on masts to harness the power of wind and propel the vessel. There is a variety of sail plans that propel sailing ships, employing square-rigged or fore-and-aft sails. Some ships c ...

s as well as 192 additional moorings in the estuary and has a depth of 2 m. The marina was built with locks, open 6 hours per tide.

External links

*
www.dives-sur-mer.com Port
*
www.dives-sur-mer.com Port Guilaume
{{coord, 49, 17, 37, N, 0, 5, 57, W, type:landmark_region:FR, display=title Dives Geography of Normandy Transport in Normandy