Where do the Terms Port and Starboard Come From?

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2 Where do the Terms Port and Starboard Come From? For those of you who enjoy boat based expeditions, you will likely be familiar with the nautical terms port and starboard. Port refers to the left hand side of your vessel, and starboard refers to the right hand side, when you are looking forward, in the direction of travel. It can be confusing to remember which is which, especially if you already struggle with left and right, but I suspect that people began using the terms port and starboard, because words like left and right were confusing, if you couldn t see where the person shouting the directions was actually standing. So by using the terms port and starboard, everyone would know that the person shouting directions meant the left side of the boat when they called port, and the right side of the boat when they called starboard.

3 In the days of the Anglo Saxons and Vikings, the boat would have a rudder on one side of the boat only, a bit different than boats have today, which have their rudders along the centerline. They called this side of the boat steorbord which meant quite literally, the side on which the vessel is steered or steering board side. In old English steor meant steer, and bord meant the side of the boat. But why were the rudders on the right side of the boat in the first place? Well, if you think about it, before we had fancy boats, we used to travel in dug out canoes, with just an oar for steering. Since the majority of people were right hand dominant, it made sense for the steering to be on the right side since most people naturally steered on the right side. As boats became more sophisticated, so did the steering oars. Over time the word steorbord' became starboard, meaning the side of the boat that the steering oar was on.

4 Now, when the helmsman, - the person who steered the boat and controlled the steering oar or rudder - was sat by the oar, steering, he would have to use both hands to control the rudder, and would have his back to the left side of the boat. So the two sides of the boat became called steorbord and bæcbord. I know, I know, the word bæcbord sounds completely different to the term port that we use today, so how did this come about? Over time, boats started to carry more things, and when they began arriving into ports around the world, they would need to pull into the harbour and unload their goods. The word laden means to load or board and bæcbord soon became laddebord, meaning the side of the boat where the loading and unloading was done. In the 16th century laddebord became shortened to larbord probably because it rhymed nicely with starboard, and by the 19th century, after a long time shouting larbord in windy conditions at sea, larboard became bord.

5 This created a bit of a problem, because the word larbord could easily be confused with starboard on a windy day, and you wouldn t want to get the two sides of the boat mixed up and end up crashing your boat! And that s why larbord became bord and then port. On the Elizabethan ships, the sailors would be divided into 2 different groups or watches to keep watch, whilst the other watch rested. The tradition was to split the watches into a port watch and a starboard watch. The port watch would wear a coloured stripe on the left shoulder of their jumper, and the starboard watch would wear a coloured stripe on their right shoulder. When the sailors wore white clothing, this stripe would be blue, and when they wore blue clothing the stripe would be red. This tradition continued up until 1895.

6 The term port was officially adopted by the British Navy in 1844, and by the US Navy in The Latin word portus means port or harbour, but it used to mean entrance or passage. Can you think of any countries which have the word port in them? What drink are they most famous for, and how do you think the drink got it s name? What job might a porters do? How do you think porters got the name porters? The next time you are on a boat, ship, or even a plane, take a peek out of the window. You might just notice that you have green lights on the right or starboard side, and red lights on the left or port side, to help people when they are navigating.