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Florida Ports

Port Canaveral

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Port Canaveral is a major cruise and cargo port located in Brevard County, Florida.

Port Canaveral is the second busiest cruise port in the world with 4.6 million cruise passengers passing through during 2004. Carnival, Disney, Royal Caribbean International, Holland America, and Norwegian Cruise Line are some of the cruise lines which regularly dock at one of the six cruise terminals. The port also bears operations for the casino ships of SunCruz Casinos and Sterling Casinos.

A world-class deep water port, Port Canaveral also has a high volume of cargo traffic. Over three million tons of bulk cargo moves through Port Canaveral each year. Commonly shipped carge includes cement, petroleum and aggregate. The port is equipped with conveyors and hoppers for loading products directly into trucks, and facilities for bulk cargo containers.

There is 750,000 square feet of covered freight storage capacity. It handled 4 million tons of cargo in 2004. The port exports fresh citrus; bulk frozen citrus juice stored in one of the largest freezer warehouses in the state; cement and building materials. The port receives lumber, salt for water softening, automobiles, and steel sheet and plate. It transships items for land, sea, air and space. Having the shortest direct entry on Florida's East Coast, Port Canaveral offers 45-minute transit time from the first sea buoy to docking. Port Canaveral's Foreign Trade Zone is among the largest general purpose FTZs in the nation - over 5 square miles. The port boosts Brevard's economy by 1/2 billion dollars annually.

Port commissioners are elected from the surrounding area by popular vote. They run non-partisan.
District 1 - Ray Sharkey
District 2 - Joe D. Matheny
District 3 - Tom Goodson
District 4 - Ralph Kennedy
District 5 - Rodney S. Ketcham

Salary is $10,083.72 annually.

Chief Executive Officer (appointed) - J. Stanley Payne

Port Canaveral welcome sign. Note the anchor and Space shuttle logo.

The idea of developing a port at this location was first conceived in the 1880s. Dedication occurred November 4, 1953, with the navy destroyer escort USS McClelland (DE-750) participating. Colonel Noah Butt, a former speaker of the Florida House of Representatives, was the first Chairman of the Canaveral Port Authority. The first port manager, George King, was announced in 1954. Commercial fishing had already begun at the port, and in the next year commercial shipping began, with a load of bagged cement delivered by the SS Morman Spruce. In 1955, the Tropicana Corporation began building a refrigerated warehouse for the purpose of storing orange juice, a significant local agricultural product, prior to shipping.

Cruise traffic first appeared at the port in 1964, with the SS Yarmouth Castle, recently purchased by Yarmouth Cruise Lines from the Chadade Steamship Company. The ship was American owned, with registration from Panama. The ship burned at sea between Miami and Nassau in 1965, and cruise traffic was limited until the 1980s.

In 1965, a lock was dedicated at the port. The Canaveral Lock is still in operation, and is maintained by the United States Army Corps of Engineers. The focus of the port throughout the 1960s and 1970s remained commercial fishing and shipping, with three 400-foot cargo piers built on the north side of the Port in 1976, and a succession of warehouses built in the port area.

Port Canaveral has played an important role in support of NASA projects out of nearby John F. Kennedy Space Center. Specifically, the Space Shuttle's external tanks are floated into Port Canaveral for each mission from their fabrication facility in Mississippi, and the solid rocket boosters are towed back through Port Canaveral after being fished out of the Atlantic Ocean after each launch.

Cruise ships docked at Port Canaveral. From left to right: Carnival, Disney, and Royal Caribbean ships.

In the early 1980s, a new port director, Charles Rowland, shifted the focus towards developing the port to a Cruise port. In 1982, a 20,000 square feet warehouse on the north side of the port was converted into Cruise Terminal 1. The SS Scandinavian Sea, a 10,427 ton ship, was the first cruise ship to homeport at Port Canaveral. Early cruises were simple day cruises out into the ocean and back. This ship, like the first to dock at Canaveral, was to meet with disaster. In March of 1984, a fire broke out on ship while at sea, 9 miles southeast of Port Canaveral. No lives were lost. A later fire was much worse. The April 7, 1990 fire on the Scandinavian Sea claimed the lives of 158 people due to the spread of fire and smoke. As a result of this disaster, the International Maritime Organization issued the Chapter II SOLAS 74 amendments in 1992. These new safety rules are intended to prevent such an occurrence from happening again.

Expanding the Cruise capability of the port begun in 1982, two more warehouses were converted to cruise terminals in 1983. The following year the SS Royale of Premier Cruise Lines was homeported at Port Canaveral. The first year round 3- and 4-day cruises to the Bahamas had begun. A fourth cruise terminal was opened in 1986.

The SeaFest annual seafood festival was first held in 1983. The celebration occurred over three days in early spring, and was co-hosted by the Cocoa Beach Area Chamber of Commerce and the Canaveral Port Authority. A local attraction with live music, local artists, and of course seafood. In 2005, the final year of the festival, 5,000 pounds of freshly caught fish, including flounder, Florida rock shrimp, blue crab claws and 100 gallons of seafood chowder were consumed at the festival. The chowder was prepared according to the winning recipe of a chowder "cook-off" competition. As of 2006, the SeaFest has been relocated to the Space Coast Stadium in Viera, Florida and renamed SpringFest. The move was caused by the site used for the event needing to be available for cargo and for increased security concerns.

The Canaveral Port Authority announced in 2006 several plans for the future

• a fuel-tank depot with a pipeline to Orlando International Airport
• attracting a mega-cruise ship. (One of Royal Caribbean International's Freedom class ships may move to Port Canaveral)
• widening of the port's channel
• enlarging the western turning basin
• construction of an additional cruise terminal

The rocket booster recovery ship Freedom Star with a spent solid rocket booster (SRB) from the STS-114 launch in tow as it makes it way through Port Canaveral.

• Canaveral Port Authority
• Port Canaveral History
• Port Canaveral Timeline (In pdf format)
• Port Canaveral Cruises
• Canaveral Lock
• Sealetter Cruise Magazine Information about the Chapter II SOLAS 74 amendment
• Coast Guard Casualties

• Maps and aerial photos Coordinates: 28.410351° -80.608063°
  • Satellite image from WikiMapia, Google Maps or Windows Live Local
  • Street map from MapQuest or Google Maps
  • Topographic map from TopoZone
  • Aerial image from TerraServer-USA