Saint-Jean-de-Luz has launched fishing boats into the Bay of Biscay for five centuries, its sheltered harbour serving Basque whalers who once sailed as far as Newfoundland in pursuit of right whales and sperm whales during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The town's maritime identity was formalised in 1558 when it received royal privileges to operate as a corsair port under letters of marque, its privateers harrying Spanish galleons throughout the Wars of Religion. Today the working port at Ciboure remains one of France's most active tuna and anchovy fisheries, with a fleet of thirty-seven vessels landing over two thousand tonnes annually, and the harbour front retains the low-slung Basque architecture—whitewashed façades, red-shuttered windows, and steep-pitched tile roofs—that has defined the coast since the Renaissance. A st jean de luz boat trip departs from the stone quays of Port de Saint-Jean-de-Luz, the same slipways where corsair captains once provisioned their frigates and where the marriage barge of Louis XIV and Maria Theresa of Spain was moored in 1660, sealing the Treaty of the Pyrenees. The coastal cruises trace the Corniche Basque, a three-kilometre stretch of stratified flysch cliffs that rise vertically from the surf, their horizontal bands of limestone, sandstone, and marl recording sixty million years of sedimentary deposition during the Cretaceous and Paleogene periods. Geologists come to study the K-Pg boundary layer visible in the cliff face at Socoa, marking the asteroid impact that ended the age of dinosaurs, and the boat route passes within fifty metres of the exposed strata, close enough to distinguish the rust-coloured clay from the grey carbonate bands above. The tours round Fort de Socoa, a star-shaped bastion designed by Vauban in 1627 and rebuilt in stone in 1680 to guard the harbour entrance against Spanish incursions. The fortress saw action during the Peninsular War when Wellington's forces besieged San Sebastián across the bay, and British naval squadrons used the roadstead as an anchorage between 1813 and 1814. Operators offer standard scenic cruises lasting forty-five to ninety minutes, with departures scheduled hourly during peak season from April through October. Evening sailings align with the golden hour, when the setting sun illuminates the façades along Rue Gambetta and casts long shadows across the beach at Grande Plage, the three-kilometre crescent of sand that has drawn bathers since the resort era began under Napoleon III in the 1850s.