Port and starboard

View of the port side of the superliner RMS Queen Mary 2

View of the starboard side of the MS Freedom of the Seas cruise ship

Port and starboard are nautical terms which refer to the left and right sides, respectively, of a ship or aircraft 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 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

Man sailing a corbita (a small coastal vessel with two masts). Marble relief, ca. 256 AD, probably made in Africa Proconsularis (Tunisia). Found at Carthage.

The origin of the term starboard comes from early boating practices. Before ships had rudders on their centrelines, they were steered by use of a specialised steering oar. This oar was held by an oarsman located in the stern (back) of the ship. However, like most 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".

Port

An early version of "port" is larboard, which itself derives from Middle-English ladebord via corruption in the 16th century by association with starboard. The term larboard, when shouted in the wind, was presumably too easy to confuse with starboard 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Larboard continued to be used well into the 1850s by whalers, despite being long superseded by "port" in the merchant vessel service at the time.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

Ships and associated lights

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 ordinary 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. If the courses are intersecting, the helmsman usually gives way to a red light by going around the stern of the stand on vessel.

There are other rules governing which is a stand on vessel, such as the wind based rules for sailing vessels, powered ships giving way to sailing ships, and all other ships 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:

• A ship that is out on the ocean has "left port".
  • The sailor left port with a red nose.
• Port and left both contain four letters.
• "Port wine is red; so is the port light."
• "Port is not right for children" (Port wine is red and not being "right for children" is therefore "left".)
• 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.
• A variation on the above is "Two drops of red port left in the bottle."
• The common abbreviation P.S. (for English postscript, derived from Latin post scriptum) can be viewed as port ("left") and starboard ("right").
• "Star light, star bright, starboard is to the 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").
• Starboard contains two letter "R"s, compared to only one in port; therefore, starboard refers to the right side.
• If someone is drinking Port, they should be on the passenger side. The "Star" of the boat, or person who is in control of the boat, is on the driver's side.

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 a vessel leaves black or green buoys to port.

Mnemonic devices for buoys in IALA area B:

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

See also

• Bow
• Navigation light
• Stern

Further reading

• Herreshoff, Halsey, (consulting editor)(1983) The Sailor’s Handbook, Little Brown and Company
• Jobson, Gary (1987) Sailing Fundamentals, Simon & Shuster
• Maloney, Elbert S., (editor) (1999) Chapman Piloting: Seamanship & Small Boat Handling, Hearst Marine Books, New York
• Rousmaniere, John (1999) The Annapolis Book of Seamanship, Simon & Shuster
• Seidman, David (1995) The Complete Sailor, International Marine

External links

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