The Port of Malta

Sheltered behind impressive ramparts, the city of Valletta is surrounded by water on three sides. As if in the process of detaching itself from the little island from which it emerges, the finger of land on the Xiberras peninsula juts out towards the Mediterranean Sea in whose history it has played such a noteworthy role. For much of its past, Valletta has been a ‘port city’, in the sense that the port has been its ‘central dynamic force and organizing principle’ and not a mere appendage but, since the nineteenth century it has, like other ports, been subject to a series of major technological cataclysms brought about by the advent of large iron ships, steam, bulk handling, containerization, and such like.

Another important vector of change closer to our times has been the move away from ports as publically-owned ‘job-banks’ towards ports as centres of privately owned, profit-generating businesses. As a consequence of all these changes the gangs of coal-haulers engaged in replenishing steamers, the shifts of dockers who manually loaded and unloaded cargoes, and the thousands of workers ashore and sailors afloat who serviced or manned shipping are no longer to be seen; in their stead have come tourists, yachters, cruise liner passengers, revellers, and those who attend to their needs as former warehouses and naval shore establishments have been recycled into passenger terminals, fancy restaurants and bars as the nature of Malta’s relationship with the sea has evolved. Despite a considerable drop or near disappearance of traditional activities, the port of Valletta has nevertheless been reborn as one of the best cruise ports of call in this part of the world and large areas of the port formerly providing anchorage to warships now provide a safe haven for pleasure yachts.

This collection of essays constitutes a testimonial to a bygone age when cargo was not containerized and, as a consequence, had to be manhandled in Valletta’s harbours rather than mechanically moved about at the Malta Freeport in Marsaxlokk, and when ships had large crews requiring large numbers of mariners, local and foreign. They and their families together with those engaged in providing them with services made up the vibrant harbour communities which constituted the theatre in which these human beings acted out the drama of their daily life in peace and war. At the same time this publication hails the new emerging Valletta which proudly showcased the best that Malta has to offer during its tenure of the title of European Capital of Culture. It has been a remarkable change and it is a renewal which is set to continue.