The Port of New Bedford is one of the oldest communities in the United States. Lying on the northern shores of Buzzards Bay, it is about 87 kilometers south of the Port of Boston, about 20 kilometers east of the Port of Falls River, and about 26 kilometers west-southwest of the Cape Cod Canal in Massachusetts. In 2000, the Port of New Bedford was home to almost 94 thousand people, and over 175 thousand lived in the metropolitan area.

Until 1996 when actions to reduce over-fishing were implemented, commercial fishing was the mainstay of the local Port of New Bedford economy. While fishing continues to be big business for the area, manufacturing and healthcare are the major industries today. The three largest employers in the Port of New Bedford are the Southcoast Hospitals Group, Titleist (golf-related products), and Riverside Manufacturing (apparel). Tourism is a growing part of the local economy, with visitors coming to the local fairs and festivals and to learn about the historic whaling industry.

Prior to the 17th Century, the areas that are today southeastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island were home to Wampanoag settlements, indigenous peoples who inhabited the lands around the Acushnet River. In 1602, Bartholomew Gosnold landed on Cuttyhunk Island to explore Cape Cod and the surrounding area.

In 1652, colonists from Plymouth came to settle the Port of New Bedford, which was then part of Dartmouth. By 1760, a fishing community was established there, and by 1765, it was a whaling port and ship-building center. The first ship, the Dartmouth, was launched from the Port of New Bedford in 1767. The Dartmouth was one of the ships involved in the famous 1773 Boston Tea Party.

During the American Revolution, American privateers used the Port of New Bedford's deep-water harbor as a base, bringing a British attack in 1778. The town recovered quickly, and it was incorporated in 1787 as New Bedford. Throughout the 18th Century, whaling merchants were attracted to the Port of New Bedford, and it became an important whaling center and foreign trade center in New England.

In 1800, the citizens of the Port of New Bedford were primarily Protestants with English, Scottish, and Welsh ancestors. During early 19th Century, a new wave of Irish immigrants brought change to the formerly uniform culture, building Catholic schools and churches. In 1838, a runaway slave settled in New Bedford. Frederick Douglass then became a famous abolitionist and major figure in American history.

Later, Portuguese immigrants were attracted to the Port of New Bedford's whaling industry. People from the Azores, Cape Verde, and Madeira built a Portuguese community within the Port of New Bedford. French-Canadians and several Jewish families from Eastern Europe moved to the town at the same time, building the 1877 Church of the Sacred Heart. In the early 20th Century, Polish-Americans arrived. By the beginning of World War I, the Port of New Bedford was a town of many diverse cultures.

By the early 19th Century, the Port of New Bedford was one of the leading whaling ports in the world. In 1848, Lewis Temple, a Port of New Bedford African-American resident, invented a new type of harpoon that revolutionized the whaling industry, bringing the city into new prominence with significant control over whaling products used around the world. It soon became one of the richest cities in the world. More than half of the United States' whaling fleet of over 700 vessels was registered at the Port of New Bedford, which played a prominent role in Herman Melville's Moby Dick.

When the 1849 California Gold Rush started out west, many whalers abandoned the industry to seek their fortunes. In the 1840s, the United States' first petroleum fuel refinery was established in the Port of New Bedford to handle crude oil from Pennsylvania. By 1859, petroleum had overtaken whale oil, and the whaling industry began to fail.

In 1871, 22 whalers from the Port of New Bedford were lost off the coast of Alaska. The Whaling Disaster of 1871 was news worldwide. The industry continued to shrink, and the United States' largest whaling company, J & WR Wing Company, sent out its last whaleship in 1914. The Port of New Bedford whaling industry came to a close with the last whaling expedition in 1925.

With the decline in the whaling industry, the Port of New Bedford began to manufacture cotton fabric, and the textiles industry became a new contributor to the struggling local economy in the late 1800s. The New Bedford Textile School opened in the 1890s, bringing new prosperity to the town. At its height, the textile industry had 32 cotton-manufacturing companies with textile factories that employed more than 30 thousand people in the Port of New Bedford area.

When the textile industry moved to the Southeastern United States in the 1920s, the local economy took another step backward. Then the Great Depression hit, and the Port of New Bedford fell on hard times. In the 1970s, tool and die factories also began to leave the area.

Despite the disappearance of the whaling industry, commercial fishing was important to the Port of New Bedford economy into the 1990s when measures were taken to limit over-fishing in the Georges Bank waters. These actions devastated the area's commercial fishing industry. While fishing remains important, manufacturing and commercial activities are the base today's Port of New Bedford economy. Tourism is also of increasing importance.

The modern Port of New Bedford has a diverse economy. By the early 21st Century, the largest economic sector in the Port of New Bedford was services, followed by wholesale trade and manufacturing. The biggest employers in the area are the health services, restaurants and bars, wholesale outlets, food stores, and social services. Manufactured products include machinery and electrical equipment, textiles and clothing, rubber goods, golf balls and equipment, photographic supplies, and metal goods. The Port of New Bedford continues to be an important fishing port.

The New Bedford Harbor Development Commission is the port authority for the Port of New Bedford. In addition to being the United States top fishing port, the New Bedford/Fairhaven Harbor houses eight marinas with state-of-the-art services for recreational boaters.

The Port of New Bedford State Pier is home to the Port of New Bedford's commercial shipping traffic. Maritime International, Inc., operates cold storage warehouses in the Port of New Bedford to serve the perishable food industry. The warehouses cover 17.7 thousand square meters and can store more than 116 thousand cubic meters of cargo. The Maritime and Bridge Terminals have more than 304.8 meters of docks with alongside depth of 9.1 meters.

The Port of New Bedford's Pope's Island Terminal contains facilities for commercial trade and for public recreational vessels. The Harbor Development Commission operates a 198-slip public marina, the Popes Island Marina, located within the Hurricane Barrier in the upper harbor.

The Sprague Energy Petroleum Terminal in the Port of New Bedford is one of the Charles H. Sprague Company network of deep-water terminals supplying energy and materials in New England. Distributing home heating oil, diesel fuel, residual fuels, gasoline, and natural gas, the Sprague Energy Petroleum Terminal also provides handling services for liquid and dry bulk cargoes.

The Port of New Bedford State Pier is home to the Quick Start Ferry facility, providing inter-modal freight transfer services for cargoes to be carried by rail and by truck. The terminal has a pier with alongside depth of 8.2 meters, capability to handle roll-on/roll-off cargoes, and offsite cold storage facilities. The 30.5-meter long ramp can handle up to 200 tons of cargo. The Port of New Bedford Harbor Development Commission operates the Freight Ferry Terminal on State Pier.

The Port of New Bedford contains a designated Free Trade Zone offering a competitive advantage to non-USA businesses wanting to enter US markets. The Free Trade Zone includes the Port of New Bedford, the Regional Airport, and adjacent handling and storage areas. It can also sponsor general purpose sites within 60 miles of the Port of New Bedford and can sponsor qualified subzones anywhere in Massachusetts.

The City of New Bedford is a medium-sized town with a fascinating history and a long maritime tradition. At one time, it was the world's most famous whaling seaport and the United States' busiest fishing port. Today, the Port of New Bedford is a culturally diverse community with many beautiful parks and public beaches.

Located on the shores of Buzzards Bay, it offers a wide variety of water-related activities as well. Visitors come to the Port of New Bedford to enjoy its rich history, its diverse ethnic cuisines, and its many opportunities for recreation and amusement. Temperatures in the Port of New Bedford range from an average low of 4.4 °C (24 °F) in January to an average high of 17 °C (63 °F) in July.

The most popular attraction in the Port of New Bedford is the Whaling Museum, America's biggest museum devoted to the history of the country's whaling industry. The museum holds an extensive collection of manuscripts, art, and artifacts related to the golden age of whaling from the late 18th Century to the early 20th Century.

The Seaman's Bethel was the inspiration for Melville's "Whaleman's Chapel" in Moby Dick. Today, the pew where Melville sat in the chapel in 1840 is marked, and the names of the local fishermen who died are listed on the chapel walls. For more than 175 years, the Seaman's Bethel was known in ports around the world. It is believed that Melville's "Father Mapple" was based on the first Chaplain, Enoch Mudge.

The Rotch-Jones-Duff House and Garden Museum memorializes the three prominent families who have lived there. Designed by Richard Upjohn and built in 1834 for successful whaling merchant William Rotch, Jr., the house is one of the best surviving residential Greek Revival buildings surviving in America today. Its furnished rooms portray the different periods and lives of the families who occupied the home from 1834 until 1981 through both permanent and changing exhibits.