There has been a port on the River Tyne for almost two thousand years, the earliest trades seen in grain and forest products from Scandinavia and the Baltic. In the second century the Romans established a port on the Tyne to trade grain, wood, hides, salt, lead, wool and fish for wine, leather, cloth, tiles and metal wares imported from North Europe, Iberia and Italy. During the Roman period, the River Tyne grew in strategic importance as a supply line to the many forts along Hadrian's Wall guarding its northern frontier. Trade in later medieval times centred on the export of wool, hides, grindstones and lead, with coal steadily increasing in importance from 1600 onwards.

Over the last two hundred years, the Port's principal traffic was coal from the Durham and Northumberland coalfields, with some 23 million tonnes handled annually at its peak, fuelling the industrial revolution. Much needed improvements to the river were covered by the River Tyne Improvement Act passed by Parliament in 1850, which effectively ended Newcastle's ancient monopoly and provided for a sharing of the conservancy responsibilities of the river apportioned between Newcastle, Gateshead, Tynemouth, South Shields, and the Admiralty.

The new River Tyne Commissioners immediately built the two great masonry piers at the entrance to the river, alleviating the mariner's dread of the notorious Black Midden's Rocks and the Herd Sand. They also dredged the numerous shoals and sandbanks between Shields and Newcastle to deepen, straighten and widen the channel, encouraging both larger ships and the establishment of many docks, quays and shipyards. Northumberland Dock was opened in 1857, Tyne Dock in 1859 and Albert Edward Dock in 1884. The river above Newcastle was similarly improved after 1876 when the old stone bridge was removed and replaced with the Swing Bridge (see entry).

Work on the North and South Piers, started in 1855, proved problematical, with four of the seven cranes on the North Pier and two of the four cranes on the South Pier torn from their mountings and washed out to sea during the storms of 1867. The large slewing cranes on both North and South Piers were lost during the winter storms of 1893 and 1894. Realignment and reconstruction of the damage to the North Pier caused by storms in 1897 was not completed until 1909, some fifty four years after commencement of the work. The South Pier also had mishaps and was not completed in 1895. The total cost of building the piers was £1,427,393, a huge sum for the time.

To replace the outmoded passenger facility within Albert Edward Dock, a deep water quay was constructed in 1928; the 335 m (1100 ft) concrete quay with a minimum 7.1 m (23.3 ft) depth of water greatly improved ship and cargo handling facilities and enjoyed a direct rail link to the main station in Newcastle. Since 1951 commercial activity on the river has gradually moved closer to the sea for economic reasons, including the prohibitive cost of dredging. A container port opened in 1991 and the Tyne Car Terminal, opened in 1994 to support Nissan's plant at Washington. Latterly, the cranes and warehouses that once lined both sides of the river have been replaced with leisure facilities.