Games : Is there a way to figure out where these places NPCs tell me to go are?

Before his untimely demise, my character met a guy Blind Bruiser, who gave him a thousand credits and orders to go pick something up from a port I'd never heard of and return with some goods. I read the flavor text carefully but didn't see any indication of where that port was. He told me not to come back without the goods, so I basically sailed around looking for it until my crew went crazy, mutinied, and murdered me.

Is there some way other than

• Already having been there, and thus having it on your map


• Cheating and looking it up on the Internet

that I'm supposed to be able to determine where exactly a port is when an NPC sends me on a mission? In this particular case, it was unfortunate because by the time he told me the name of the place I had to go, it was too late to back out. On a related note, the admiralty also wanted me to do something at a particular port but gave me no real indication of where that port was.

Are you just sort of supposed to sail around until you get lucky, or is there a way to get a general location of things that I'm missing?