The primary modern meaning for sally port is a secure, controlled entryway, as of a fortification or a prison. The entrance is usually protected by some means, such as with a fixed wall blocking the door which must be circumvented before entering, but which prevents direct enemy fire from a distance. It may include the use of two doors such as with an airlock. In former times, from around 1600 to 1900, a "sally port" was a sort of dock where boats would pick up a ship's crew and ferry them to the vessel anchored offshore, or vice versa. The term is occasionally still used today, especially in coastal Great Britain. However, there are not many old sally ports left.
Read more about Sally Port: Etymology and Historical Usage, Modern Usage
Famous quotes containing the words sally and/or port:
“Hard times accounted in large part for the fact that the exposition was a financial disappointment in its first year, but Sally Rand and her fan dancers accomplished what applied science had failed to do, and the exposition closed in 1934 with a net profit, which was donated to participating cultural institutions, excluding Sally Rand.”
—For the State of Illinois, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“When we think back to our forefathers, with their sedentary lives of forest-chopping, railroad-building, fortune-founding, their fox-hunting and Indian taming, their prancing about in the mazurka and the polka, with their coattails flying and their bustles bouncing, to say nothing of their all-day sessions with the port and straight bourbon,... we must realize that we are a nation, not of neurasthenics, but of sissies and slow-motion sports.”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)