The Port of Chester is an American
port on the west bank of the
Delaware River in
Delaware County, Pennsylvania.
Centered around
Chester it ranges into
Marcus Hook to the south and
Eddystone to the north. It is part of the
Delaware Valley port complex and lies between the
Port of Wilmington and the
Port of Philadelphia. Traditionally, shipbuilding and later automobile assembly were the mainstays of the port. It has since given way to other manufacturing and recreational activities, with Penn Terminals the only traditional maritime facility.
Sun Shipbuilding & Drydock Company - The United States' biggest post-Civil War shipyard was founded by the Sun Oil Company in 1917 as a private shipyard for production of oil tankers. During the period between the First and Second World Wars, when many other yards were shut down due to a surplus in vessels and the Great Depression, Sun maintained its building pace as the US began to move away from coal as the main source of fuel for ships, powerplants and machinery and into oil. It closed in 1990. The US Navy has named ships
USS Chester in honor of the port.
In the "project of 1885" the U.S. government undertook systematically the formation of a 26-foot (7.9 m)
shipping channel 600 feet (180 m) wide from Philadelphia to deep water in
Delaware Bay. The River and Harbor Act of 1899 provided for a 30-foot (9.1 m) channel 600 feet (180 m) wide from Philadelphia to the deep water of the bay.[3]
Since 1941, the Delaware River Main Channel was maintained at a depth of 40 ft (12 m). A 102.5-mile stretch of this federal navigation channel, from
Port of Philadelphia and
Port of Camden to the mouth of the Delaware Bay, was deepened to 45 ft (14 m), which was completed in 2017.[4][5][6][7][8][9]