It's not the 18th century where rats traveled along guy ropes on to shore. Rats will travel in containers, but that's a problem for where the containers are opened as much as it is for the ports.
Rats still very much travel along mooring lines to and from ships.
If you go look at any modern port you will see that the ships have large discs on any line going to shore.
That disc is an anti rat measure. At least one ship I worked on got rats, and we had to deal with them before we left port. Other ships certainly wouldn’t go through the effort.
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It's not the 18th century where rats traveled along guy ropes on to shore. Rats will travel in containers, but that's a problem for where the containers are opened as much as it is for the ports.
Rats still very much travel along mooring lines to and from ships.
If you go look at any modern port you will see that the ships have large discs on any line going to shore.
That disc is an anti rat measure. At least one ship I worked on got rats, and we had to deal with them before we left port. Other ships certainly wouldn’t go through the effort.