What makes a port truly empty?

I was standing at the edge of the old container terminal in Leith yesterday, just before dawn. The cranes were still, the rails silent. Not abandoned—just waiting. I kept thinking: is an empty port still a port? Or is it just a shape that remembers movement? What do you call a place that holds the memory of cargo but no cargo now? I’ve seen ports with ships, and ports with nothing. But this… this felt like a pause between stories.