Ancient Greeks heavily relied on sea travel as land travel was difficult. Greece is a series of archipelagos and peninsulas, surrounded by the Ionian, Mediterranean, and Aegean Sea, which they traversed by trireme ships. Beyond travel, they instituted maritime trade and frequented the ports of Canopus before Alexandria in Egypt and Messina in Sicily from Athens. Ostia Antica and Portus were later set up in Rome, and Swahili kingdoms of East Africa were described to have vibrant trade ports. Trade flourished amidst the Arabs, Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, Africans and Chinese. The south-western coastal ports of Muziris and Calicut, or Kozhikode, in present day Kerala, are accounted in ancient texts and is to have played a crucial role in the spice trade. The latter gained prominence after the arrival of Vasco da Gama. The port of Lothal, the southernmost city of the Indus civilisation, at the edge of the Arabian Sea in present day Gujrat and is believed to be the world’s oldest dock, dating back to 2200 BCE. Another important port in Gujrat, at the mouth of the river Narmada is Bharuch. East of the Indian subcontinent, Chittagong in present day Bangladesh, has been found referred in Ptolemy’s map, dating back to 2nd century. And the south-eastern ports of Tuticorin (Thoothukudi), Arikemedu at modern day Pondicherry and Poompuhar, all in Tamil Nadu were bustling ports. In the far east, ancient seaports were Guangzhou in China during the Qin Dynasty and Osaka in Japan during the Edo period.

Civil engineering plays a crucial role in the design of water transportation and construction of ports and harbours. Ports are locations where ships and vessels can dock and allow movement of people and goods and are either on coast or shores, while harbours are constructed for the safe keeping of the vessels. Other infrastructures that have nuanced variations but support sea travel are; quay or wharf, pier, jetty, berth, and dock, and all together form a network of waterway infrastructure for overseas transportation.

The beginning of rails marked the demise of canals and inland waterways, which used to be the preferred mode of transportation. All ancient civilizations settled around rivers, such as, the Indus civilization along Indus River, Mesopotamia between the Tigris-Euphrates, Memphis (Egypt) along the Nile. Several prominent European capital cities, such as London, Paris and Amsterdam all are also along rivers. Apart from being a source of water for consumption and irrigation, riverways and inland waterways became the mode of trade and travel. Several other cities, such as, Giethoorn in Netherlands, Birmingham in England, Burges in Belgium, Hamburg in Germany, Stockholm in Sweden, are all traversed with network of canals with most prominent being Venice, Italy, which has 150 canals including the Grand Canal. These were built by lining the dugout pits by closely spaced alder wood which is waterproof, to make the lagoon fit for habitation. While most of these canals are 1.5-2m deep, the Canale della Giudecca that separates the main part of Venice from the island of Giudecca, is about 12-17m deep.

Two of the most ambitious canal projects that are engineering feats are; the Suez canal, also referred to as Qanat al Suway (length of 193Km with branches, depth of 20m and width of 205m) across the Isthmus of Suez in Egypt which connects the Gulf of Suez and the Mediterranean, thereby allowing a quicker path between the Pacific and Indian Oceans, and the Panama canal (length of 82Km with branches, depth of 12m and width of 150m) which connects the Pacific and the Atlantic Oceans across the Isthmus of Panama amidst the Caribbean. These two interventions significantly changed the time required and ease of transport for trade, becoming pivotal contributors to economic growth.