Port and starboard

Port and starboard are nautical terms which refer to the left and right sides (respectively) of a ship as perceived by a person on board facing the bow (front). At night, the port side of a vessel is indicated with a red navigation light and the starboard side with a green one. The terms are also used on aircraft, spacecraft, and analogous vessels.^{[dubious – discuss]}

The starboard side of most naval vessels the world over is designated the "senior" side. The officers' gangway or sea ladder is shipped on this side and this side of the quarterdeck is reserved for the captain. The flag or pennant of the ship's captain or senior officer in command is generally hoist on the starboard yard.

Etymology

Starboard

The origin of the term starboard comes from early boating practices. Before ships had rudders on their centerlines, they were steered by use of a specialized steering oar. This oar was held by an oarsman located in the stern (back) of the ship. However, like most of the rest of society, there were many more right-handed sailors than left-handed sailors. This meant that the steering oar (which had been broadened to provide better control) used to be affixed to the right side of the ship. The word starboard comes from Old English steorbord, literally meaning the side on which the ship is steered, descendant from the Old Norse words stýri meaning “rudder” (from the verb stýra, literally “being at the helm”, “having a hand in”) and borð meaning etymologically “board”, then the “side of a ship”. In many non-English languages, the equivalent word is derived from a Germanic term akin to "backboard", from the same roots as English "back" and "board".

Port

An archaic version of "port" is larboard. The term larboard, when shouted in the wind, was presumably too easy to confuse with starboard^[1] and so the word port came to replace it. Port is derived from the practice of sailors mooring ships on the left side at ports in order to prevent the steering oar from being crushed.

Larboard continued to be used well into the 1850s by whalers, despite being long superseded by "port" in the merchant vessel service at the time. "Port" was not officially adopted by the Royal Navy until 1844 (Ray Parkin, H. M. Bark Endeavour). Robert FitzRoy, Captain of Darwin's HMS Beagle, is said to have taught his crew to use the term port instead of larboard, thus propelling the use of the word into the Naval Services vocabulary.

Right-of-way for other vessels

Vessels at sea do not actually have any "right of way"—they may be, correctly, in the position of being the "stand on vessel" or the "give way" vessel. Therefore, at no time should any vessel actually navigate its way into a collision, and the regulations are clear that no one in command of a vessel may assume a "right of way" up to a point of collision.

Consider two ships on courses that intersect. The rule is that the ship on the left must give way. The stand on vessel sees the green light on the starboard (right) side of the ship on the left. The give way vessel sees the red light on the port side of the stand on vessel. The helmsman gives way to a red light by either turning away and showing a stern light (which is white), or by going around the stern of the stand on vessel.

This was likely the beginning of the convention for traffic lights that use red to mean stop and green to mean go.^{[citation needed]}

There are other rules governing which is a stand on vessel, such as small ships giving way to big ships, powered ships giving way to sailing ships, and in some circumstances vessels under sail giving way to powered vessels that are constrained by their draft, or restricted in their ability to maneuver. Therefore the green light does not mean an unqualified go, but rather it means proceed with caution subject to other rules applying. The earliest railway signals went red/green/white (as per the stern light) for stop/caution/go following this naval practice and were only later changed to the more familiar red/yellow/green.

The very simple application of red light and green light is that if the helmsman sees a red light, the helmsman should make sure that the other vessel can see his green light, which usually means giving way. If he sees a green light, he should stand on, but without getting into a collision situation.

The sailing rule that dictates that a sailing vessel on starboard tack is the stand on vessel is as old as any other regulation. Likewise, if on the same tack, a sailing vessel that is upwind of another is the give way vessel.

Mnemonic devices

There are a number of tricks used to remember which side port and starboard each refer to:

The simplest being "no, port left"
"Star light, star bright, starboard is to the right."
A ship that is out on the ocean has "left port".
The English words "port" and "left" both have four letters in them. Port is left when facing forward, so naturally starboard is right.
Terms referring to the right side are longer words ("starboard", "right", and "green"), while terms referring to the other side are shorter words ("port", "left", and "red").
The phrase "Any red port left in the can?" can be a useful reminder. It breaks down as follows:
- The drink port is a fortified red wine—which links the word "port" with the color red, used for navigational lights (see below).
- "Left" comes from the phrase and so port must be on the left.
- The reference to "can" relates to the fact that port-hand buoys are "can"-shaped (only in IALA region A).
A variation on the above is "Two drops of red port left in the bottle."

Buoys

A port buoy is a lateral buoy used to guide vessels through channels or close to shallow water. The port buoy is one that a vessel must leave to port when passing upstream. If in International Association of Lighthouse Authorities area A, the port buoys are red. If in IALA area B (Japan, the Americas, South Korea, and the Philippines) then the "handedness" of buoyage is reversed, and black or green buoys are left to port.

Mnemonic devices for buoys in IALA area B:

Best People On Earth = "Black Port on Entering"
RRR = Red Right Returning

References

^ Norie, John William; Hobbs, J. S. (1847) [1840]. Sailing directions for the Bay of Biscay, including the coasts of France and Spain, from Ushant to Cape Finisterre ("A new ed., rev. and considerably improved" ed.). C. Wilson. p. 1. OCLC 41208722. Retrieved 7 February 2010. An order, recently issued by the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty, states, that in order to prevent mistakes, which frequently occur from the similarity of the words starboard and larboard, in future, the word port is to be substituted for larboard, in all Her Majesty's ships or vessels.

External links

The origins of 'port' and 'starboard' at the UK National Maritime Museum website

[Norie1847-1] Norie, John William; Hobbs, J. S. (1847) [1840]. Sailing directions for the Bay of Biscay, including the coasts of France and Spain, from Ushant to Cape Finisterre ("A new ed., rev. and considerably improved" ed.). C. Wilson. p. 1. OCLC 41208722. Retrieved 7 February 2010. An order, recently issued by the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty, states, that in order to prevent mistakes, which frequently occur from the similarity of the words starboard and larboard, in future, the word port is to be substituted for larboard, in all Her Majesty's ships or vessels.

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