The same 27 decades, ranked three ways — by ships, tonnage and value. The top ten are ranked; the next ten (11–20) form an unranked second tier, shown faint.
| Port | Decades in top 10 | + tier 2 | Span in top 10 | Peak | Presence |
|---|
Every decade's top twenty, read down a column; every port's arc, read across. Solid = ranked top-10 standing; the faint outline = the second tier (11–20). Σ shows top-10 decades · +tier-2.
Three lenses, three answers. Ship movements favour dense coasting and bulk hubs; tonnage rewards large ships; value rewards rich cargoes. The top ten are a defensible synthesis; the second tier is deliberately unranked — past rank ~10 the evidence can support membership but not fine order.
Units are not interchangeable, and per-port granularity is thinnest in the earliest decades (Sound Toll destinations only from the mid-1660s; pre-1618 cargo data unreliable). The 1810s covers 1810–1815.
Declared boundary. these rankings order ports within the EUROPEAN COMMERCIAL RECORD — the toll, customs, and company series that survive. Ports whose traffic that record cannot measure are not ranked here regardless of their real size: Istanbul, by any physical measure among the great ports of this whole period, is the exemplar (present, unranked, in the tier-3 promotion queue). Absence from these tables is a statement about the archive, not about the sea.