page_title: Mormugao Port Trust
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Mormugao Port Trust / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Vasco-da-Gama port c. 1890s
context_page_description: Mormugao Port Trust is a port on the western coast of India, in the coastal state of Goa. Commissioned in 1885 on the site of a natural harbour, it is one of India's oldest ports. The port employs around 2,600 employees and has about 4,000 pensioners.
  The Mormugao Port Trust, which operates the port, is the largest employer in the Vasco region and has a complete mini-township in Headland Sada which includes schools, residential complexes and amenities for employees of the Port.
context_section_description: In the 19th century, Portuguese India and British India decided to join forces to improve maritime trade, under the Anglo-Portuguese Treaty of 1878. Mormugao was identified as having one of the best natural harbours, and a metre-gauge railway line was constructed to connect it. The work of modernising the port and laying the metre-gauge railway was undertaken by a British company, ‘The Western Indian Portuguese Guaranteed Railway Company’. This company was founded in Britain exclusively for this purpose. The Portuguese paid a huge sum for the project, and even paid for the registration of this company in England. Work began in 1878. The harbour was commissioned in 1885, and the railway line (running till Sanvordem, and later to Castle Rock) was inaugurated in 1887. The first ship to sail into Mormugao Port was the SS Westbourne, which brought railway equipment, in April 1885.
  During World War II, Mormugao Harbour was the site of Operation Creek, which resulted in the bombing of a German merchant ship, Ehrenfels, which had secretly been transmitting information to U-boats. In 2017, MPT announced that it would salvage the remnants of the ship, as they were hindering the progress in a project of setting up a fishing harbour.
  The port was recognised as a major port in 1963 under the Major Port Trusts Act, 1963, shortly after the Liberation of Goa.
caption: Mormugao port c. 1890s
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