PORT AND STARBOARD: Make sure the left hand knows what the right hand is doing

Listen to the podcast version of this article: Port and starboard

Why don't sailors simply use the words right and left like the rest of us? Well, in a storm or in an imminent collision, it could make the difference between breathing above water or breathing beneath the water, which never works out too well without special equipment.

 

Right and left are relative terms; they depend on the direction you are facing. Traditionally, if you are at the back of a boat looking forward, starboard is to your right, and port is on your left. But the boat has its own right and left, and those words are locked in no matter which direction you are facing. Turn all the way around and look over the back of the boat, and port is still the boat's left and starboard is still the boat's right. Otherwise, we’d have a confused and frantic last-second discussion in an emergency: “do you mean my right or your right?!”

 

As to why those particular words are used, there are historical reasons. In early Germanic boats, the rudder was not centered in the back of the vessel as it is today. Rather, it was a steering oar attached to the right side (because right-handed helmsmen were statistically predominant—about 90%). Board meant the side of a boat, the board, and star was actually a variation of a Germanic/Dutch word that meant steering. So starboard translates as the steering side.

 

Port was a later addition to maritime vocabulary. Earlier, the term was larboard—lar- being the loading side. You couldn’t load on the starboard side -- the boat's right side -- because the rudder was in the way and might be damaged rubbing against the pier. In port, you would dock with the left side of the boat facing the pier or the shoreline.

 

Since "larboard: could mistakenly be heard as "starboard "in stormy conditions, the Latin term portus (port, harbor, passageway) was eventually substituted. The British Navy made it official in 1800's, and soon it became standard, much for the same reason that English became the official language for airplane operations -- uniformity leads to safety.