Port is the nautical term (used on
boatA boat is a watercraft of modest size designed to float or plane, to provide passage across water. Usually this water will be inland or in protected coastal areas. However, boats such as the whaleboat were designed to be operated from a ship in an offshore environment. In naval terms, a boat is...
s and ships) that refers to the
leftLeft and Right: A Journal of Libertarian Thought was a libertarian journal published between 1965 and 1968. Founded by Murray N. Rothbard, Karl Hess, George Resch, and Leonard P...
side of a ship, as perceived by a person on board the ship and facing towards the
bowThe bow is a nautical term that refers to the forward part of the hull of a ship or boat, the point that is most forward when the vessel is underway. Both of the adjectives fore and forward mean towards the bow...
(the front of the vessel). The port side of a vessel is indicated with a
red navigation lightA Navigation light is a colored source of illumination on an aircraft, spacecraft, or waterborne vessel, used to signal a craft's position, heading, and status...
at night.
The term is also used on aircraft, spacecraft, and analogous vessels. The equivalent for the right-hand side is
starboardStarboard is the nautical term that refers to the right side of a vessel as perceived by a person on board a vessel and facing the bow . The equivalent for the left-hand side is port. The starboard side of a vessel is indicated with a
green navigation light at...
.
An archaic version of the term is
larboard. 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, referring to the side of the ship where cargo is loaded from the
port||-||-||-||-||-||-||-||-|}A port is a facility for receiving ships and/or transferring cargo. It is usually found at the edge of an ocean, sea, river, or lake. The best ports have deep water in channels or berths, and protection from the wind and waves...
. The term larboard continued its use well into the 1850s by
whalerA whaler is a specialized ship, designed for whaling, the catching and/or processing of whales. The former included the whale catcher, a steam or diesel-driven vessel with a harpoon gun mounted at its bows. The latter included such vessels as the sail or steam-driven whaleship of the 16th to early...
s, despite the term being long superseded by "port" in the merchant vessel service at the time.
The term "port" was not officially adopted by the
Royal NavyThe Royal Navy of the United Kingdom is the oldest of HM Armed Forces . From the beginning of the 18th century until well into the 20th century, it was the most powerful navy in the world, playing a key part in establishing the British Empire as the dominant world power from 1815 until the early...
until 1844 (
Ray ParkinRay Parkin was an Australian writer, amateur artist, and self-taught historian, noted for his memoirs of World War II and a major work on Captain Cook's Endeavour voyage.-Early life:...
,
H. M. Bark Endeavour).
Robert FitzRoyVice-Admiral Robert FitzRoy RN achieved lasting fame as the captain of HMS Beagle during Charles Darwin's famous voyage, and as a pioneering meteorologist who made accurate weather forecasting a reality...
, Captain of
Darwin'sCharles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist who realised and presented compelling evidence that all species of life have evolved over time from common ancestors, through the process he called natural selection...
HMS BeagleHMS Beagle was a Cherokee class 10-gun brig-sloop of the Royal Navy, named after the beagle, a breed of dog. She was launched on 11 May 1820 from the Woolwich Dockyard on the River Thames, at a cost of £7,803...
, 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 the
starboardStarboard is the nautical term that refers to the right side of a vessel as perceived by a person on board a vessel and facing the bow . The equivalent for the left-hand side is port. The starboard side of a vessel is indicated with a
green navigation light at...
article for further explanation).
The word
starboard comes from
Old EnglishOld English , also called Anglo-Saxon, is an early form of the English language that was spoken and written in parts of what are now England and south-eastern Scotland between at least the mid-5th century and the mid-12th century. What survives through writing represents primarily the literary...
steorbord, literally meaning the side on which the ship is steered. The old English term
stēorbord descends 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 languages, other than English, the word is derived from a
GermanicThe Germanic languages are a group of related languages that constitute a branch of the Indo-European language family. The common ancestor of all the languages in this branch is Proto-Germanic, spoken in approximately the mid-1st millennium BC in Iron Age northern Europe...
term akin to "backboard", from the same roots as English "back" and "board".
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
IALAThe International Association of Marine Aids to Navigation and Lighthouse Authorities is a non-profit organization founded in 1957 to collect and provide nautical expertise and advice.-Background:...
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.
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.
There are a number of tricks used to remember port and starboard:
- The simplest being "The ship left port"
- Port is to the left facing forward; "port" and "left" each have four letters.
- Similar to above, all are short words ("port", "left", and "red") while other side long words ("starboard", "right", and "green")
- Also the phrase "Any red port left in the can?" can be a useful reminder. It breaks down as follows: - Port, the drink, is a fortified red wine which links the word port with the colour red, used for the navigation 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 harbour buoys are "can" shaped (only in IALA region A)
- A variation on the above is "Two drops of red port left in the bottle."
For buoys in IALA B:
- Best People On Earth - Black Port on Entering
- RRR - Red Right Returning
External links