In the 17th century the military engineer Vauban drew up plans to develop Cherbourg into a port where passing ships could shelter from attack or storms.

By the 1770s, with French involvement in the American War of Independence, Louis XVI sought to create a large military port on the Cotentin Peninsula, allowing access into the English Channel, and comparable to that of Brest on the Atlantic.

The second project, by director of maritime engineering Antoine Choquet de Lindu, proposed the construction of a first class arsenal at La Hougue.

La Bretonnière recommended the construction of a jetty "two thousand toises long" between the tip of Querqueville and the reefs of Île Pelée, with the dredging of a harbour to a depth of 20 meters.

Île Pelée was fortified, and the wooden cones filled with stone were sunk outside the harbour(one in the presence of the king), to serve as a foundation for the breakwater.

The cones were damaged by bad weather, and were gradually replaced by a continuous breakwater in pierres perdues, when the works were interrupted by the French Revolution.

Work resumed in 1803 under the orders of First Consul Napoleon Bonaparte (decree of 25 Germinal year XI), as part of the plans to invade the United Kingdom.

The engineer Joseph Cachin continued building the military port to the west of the town, the avant-port of which was opened on 27 August 1813 by Empress Marie-Louise.

With the naval importance of the port reduced, the well-developed harbour became a base for transatlantic trade connecting northern Europe with the east coast of the Americas.

The port was used as the evacuation point as British and French soldiers withdrew ahead of the advancing German Army, Cherbourg becoming the "Norman Dunkirk".

Maritime prefect Vice-Admiral Jules Le Bigot ensured three submarines under construction at the arsenal, Praya, Roland Morillot and Martinique, were destroyed, and then surrendered the city to General Erwin Rommel.

On 24 December 1944, the Belgian freighter SS Léopoldville, carrying 2,237 American soldiers of the 66th Infantry Division, was torpedoed by a German submarine off Cherbourg.