Port (nautical)

Port is the nautical term (used on boats and ships) that refers to the left side of a ship, as perceived by a person facing towards the bow (the front of the vessel). The terms are also used for aircraft, spacecraft, and analogous vessels. The equivalent for the right-hand side is "starboard".

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 IALA area A. If in IALA area B (Japan, the Americas, South Korea, and the Philippines) then the 'handedness' of buoyage is reversed!

An archaic version of the term is larboard. The term larboard, when shouted in the wind, was presumably too easy to confuse with starboard - both words have two syllables - and so the word port came to replace it, referring to the side of the ship where cargo is loaded from the port. The term larboard continued its use well into the 1850s by whalers, despite the term being long superseded by "port" in the merchant vessel service at the time. 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. Another source suggests a different archaic word "portboard" (see starboard for further explanation).

Ships and aircraft carry a red light on the port side, and a green one on the starboard side, plus a white light at the rear. Easily remembered since "port" and "left" each have four letters.