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Why do ships use “port” and “starboard” instead of “left” and “right?”
- kstenerud 3y agoAnd through all of this, all I can think of is "There's Klingons on the starboard bow, starboard bow, starboard bow."
- drpixie 3y agoWipe them off, Jim.
- Graziano_M 3y agoI always knew port was left and starboard was right, but I basically used the trick "left is four letters, like port". I like learning etymology, though, because now I don't need some trick, I just understand the reason that the word is used.
- zwieback 3y ago"Driver" and "passenger" side for cars. Oh wait, doesn't work in England etc. I guess for ships there is no variation between countries? Starboard is presumably where the wheel was so everyone must have left it on the right side?
- Broken_Hippo 3y agoI've always assumed that "driver" and "passenger" were simply reversed for England, etc. I'd reverse it for postal trucks, after all, or cars imported from England and such.
- chimprich 3y agoIn the UK the (possibly?) more common terms are nearside (kerb side) and offside (road side). It's maybe better than "driver" and "passenger side" because it still makes sense when you're driving a car with different "handedness" to your current road network.
- zwieback 3y agoRight, that was my point. The article says that port/starboard is used because left/right is confusing depending on the direction. But unlike ships cars have the driver side right or left so it's not that useful.
- Someone 3y ago> Starboard is presumably where the wheel was Not the wheel, but (as this article also says) the steering oar. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steering_oar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steering_oar: “The steering oar or steering board is an over-sized oar or board, to control the direction of a ship or other watercraft prior to the invention of the rudder.“
- gamblor956 3y agoIt still works just as well in England... Things that are driver-side in the U.S. are also driver-side in England, because the layout is designed around the position of the driver. "Starboard" comes from Old English "steor bord", which meant "steering side of the boat" back in the days when a steering oar was used to steer the boat. Most sailors were right-handed so this was almost always the right side. It was easier to dock with the other side of the boat facing the port, so the left side became "larboard" and then simply "port." English is the international nautical language owing to its centuries of dominance of the oceans, followed by the U.S. dominance of global politics, so the English terms became the standard nautical terms. (Note: technically the international nautical language is "Seaspeak," which is a special dialect of English created specifically for nautical use.)
- jiayo 3y agoHaving grown up in a large transit-oriented city, I learned to drive as a grownup. I really struggled with the concept of reversing. "Turn the wheel left!" "You just turn the wheel the way you want the _back_ of the car to go." "No, the other left!" At this point I was still limited to driving in empty 1000 space parking lots and was getting frustrated. One day I realized, I could ask my driving companion-turned-instructor "hey when you say left and right, can you just say passenger-side or driver-side?" After a few iterations at this, it all clicked. My new-driver brain could do absolute positioning consistently with minimal effort, instead of having to calculate relative positioning each time and getting frazzled.
- oriettaxx 3y agobetter https://www.divescotty.com/underwater-blog/boat-side-starboard-port-side.php https://www.divescotty.com/underwater-blog/boat-side-starboa...
- taeric 3y agoMuch better explanation! Thanks for linking it in.
- jeffwass 3y agoGreat description of the meaning behind the red and green lights on boats, thanks for sharing.
- pwagland 3y agoI like this description, but I have always thought that the saying "There is some red port left in the bottle" a much simpler way of remembering the conjunction of these terms. Assuming you are fasting forwards in the boat of course!
- java-man 3y agoI wonder why more people are right-handed. What could be a biological basis for that?
- tomohelix 3y agoProbably the same reason why most biomolecules are chiral, i.e. having left and right side. Last time I read about this, I think some physicist said something about the rotation of elementary particles and radiation stuff that are way over my head.
- wpietri 3y agoI doubt that, as we left-handers are made up of the same sort of molecule as everybody else.
- tomohelix 3y agoHaha no, I think you misunderstood. I meant the underlying reason for human to have a preferred "side" is probably the same reason that life has a preferred "side" for chemicals. Both humans and enzymes can be chiral, i.e. asymmetrical so I think they might be connected. Don't worry, I am not an atom-ist or a chiral-ist. All sides are equal! (except the ambidextrous master race :D )
- wpietri 3y agoWhat is the reason you have in mind? I suspect it's different, in that I expect the reason for people is something like "handedness makes people better at violence". Whereas I suspect chirality is more like driving on the right/left side of the road. Which one you pick doesn't matter, but picking is less chaotic than not picking.
- tomohelix 3y agoI actually don't know. Like I mentioned above, there have been a few theories about how life is so strongly asymmetrical but nothing concrete or proven yet. In fact, it is a bit counterintuitive because all natural chemical reactions produces racemic mixtures and only life produces specific stereoisomers. It also means life has evolved to give up nearly half of the natural resources available, a very strange thing in terms of evolution. Not all enzymes are stereospecific though. Some of them can take any configuration of a chemical and convert them to other type of isomer. But these are rare and usually an exception, not the norm. Still, it makes it harder to figure out why chirality is so important in life and not so much in some other parts of life. Maybe your explanation about handedness makes sense. But then it would fail at explaining ambidextrous people since they are definitely better and yet still so rare. Life is really difficult to figure out.
- taeric 3y agoThis explanation feels kind of awkward. My left hand does not depend on my orientation, so I am unclear why the "left side" of a boat would. I get why there are better terms to use when talking about others. At least, I think I do. But it feels like there is more history to these terms than just "needs to be fixed."
- FoomFries 3y agoBecause if you face the back of the boat the sides reverse. It’s similar to stage left. When you can’t afford to be confused, one name is better than a conflicting argument between your left and the boats left.
- taeric 3y agoBut if I'm looking at you and speak of your left hand, I am not speaking of the hand to my left. Literally nobody does that. At least not on purpose.
- lesuorac 3y agoDo you own a car? Commonly when speaking with a mechanic they'll ask questions like Driver's side or Passenger's side to get away from left/right. People very often describe things with just _left_ or just _right_. They don't say things like when I'm sitting in the car the door to my left is hard to open. They just say the left door is broken even when both them and the mechanic are facing the car head on. By having people use an unambiguous vocabulary it makes up for people not thinking about how their statements will be interpreted. If the deckhands were genius's they're be charting the course not heaving rope.
- taeric 3y agoYou aren't wrong. In that mistakes can be made. But if I ask you about your left hand, is that ambiguous? By your definition here, that is an ambiguous question. But, that just feels wrong. Edit: I'll note that it is amusing to compare to cars. It seems the etymology of the terms is literally "driver side".
- drewrv 3y agoI understand that the terms are mostly unambiguous, but I always wonder how these get defined in edge cases. For example ferries, at least where I live, alternate the direction of travel as they go back and forth. There isn't a fixed "bow" or "stern" from which to define port and starboard.
- 1123581321 3y agoThose ferries should be switching the direction the crew faces (perhaps in a different structure on the other end of the boat) and turning on the appropriate lights so port and starboard are lit correctly. They should have two sets of colored lights to handle travel in both directions.
- xg15 3y agoDon't they have to swap the lights anyway if the ferry reverses direction? After all, the red/green indicators are primarily for showing which direction the ship is moving in.
- 1123581321 3y agoIf I understand you correctly, yes, exactly.
- hinkley 3y agoWith double ended ferries you're going to dock bow first because that's the direction all the cars pointed. If you got halfway through a crossing and they announced there's a problem at the destination (broken thruster, docks on fire, dragons, docks on fire because of dragons), you would have to turn the ship around 180º and go back to your origin with the same bow that you started the trip with so everyone could disembark. The only time you'd switch ship orientation mid-trip is if something broke such that one end of the ship was navigable and the other was not. At which point you'd either have to dock backward (maybe with a tug) or everyone would have to back off the ship.
- 3y ago
- bink 3y agoRelated: Why is it called a "poop deck"? https://emmacruises.com/poop-decks-what-are-they-and-why-are-they-called-that/ https://emmacruises.com/poop-decks-what-are-they-and-why-are...
- ArchieMaclean 3y agoPresumably it came from Latin 'puppis' (aft, stern, poop deck) before the passing through French to English.
- fishtoaster 3y agoBecause you need to differentiate between "my left when facing the boat" and "my left when on the boat facing forward" or really, left from any other perspective. And any time there's a multi-word phrase like that that gets used a lot over many years, it gets shortened.
- gkoberger 3y agoOf course, but this article explains what each word means. Starboard => Means "steering side of the boat" (b/c the oar was on the right side due to sailors mostly being right handed) Port => The side that faces the port when docked
- callamdelaney 3y agoYou can dock a boat anyway you like, or have been instructed to do so by the dockmaster.
- hinkley 3y agoBut if you have a steering board on the other side of your ship, it's a lot easier to dock facing the other way.
- gkoberger 3y agoFrom Wikipedia: “Vessels with bilateral symmetry have left and right halves which are mirror images of each other. One asymmetric feature is where access to a boat, ship, or aircraft is at the side, it is usually only on the port side (hence the name)”
- callamdelaney 3y agoThere are definitely more boats with bilateral symmetry than asymmetric these days.
- mr_toad 3y agoPassenger vessels typically dock port side to the dock. Same with aircraft.
- tim_hutton 3y agoThe only was I can remember which is port and starboard is by thinking about boarding an airplane. The steps/tunnel are always docked on the 'port' side, just as boats always dock on the port side. The cockpit/bow is always on your left when you board.
- cyberax 3y agoMy shortcut: "port" and "left" have the same number of letters.
- hinkley 3y agor and s are next to each other, l is closer to p than to anything else.
- Yoofie 3y agoThis is the same method I use. I always wondered why they didn't use the cardinal directions (north, east, south, west) or why they didn't use the hours of a clock face to indicate direction. With the clock face, you get even more precision where exactly something happened. Man overboard, 4 o'clock!
- aintgonnatakeit 3y agoThat’d be “3 points abaft the starboard beam”
- j5155 3y agoIn my experience with man overboard drills clock faces are used as you describe. Port/starboard is only for low precision things.
- Niksko 3y agoAnd further, "port" wine is red, and the red beacon light is on the port side of an aeroplane (with the starboard side having green, and white on the tail)
- lamontcg 3y ago
- xiphias2 3y agoThey should get rid of these terms, as they are distracting. A big part of the training material for boating license is about learning things that people are not using in practice, which makes less time / mental power to learn what is really important to survive and avoid crash (what's really important).
- CardenB 3y agoThey are not distracting. There are many intense situations on a boat, and a crew is required to cooperate in order to survive. This means you must have extremely precise wording to quickly explain what needs to be done. This vocabulary is important for this reason, and is able to sharpen focus, rather than distract. It requires a process of learning, and that is intentional.
- lsaferite 3y agoIn English "right" is one syllable and "starboard" is two. All things considered, using right/left is more concise. If you are aware enough of your orientation on a boat to know where port and starboard are located, you are also aware enough to know where left and right are located.
- rmrk 3y agoIt's funny to me that some olaf 1000 years ago just called them what they were; the steering side and the docking side, and now we have to use the same words which don't make any sense to us. I vote we just call them the steering-side and the docking-side again.
- wpietri 3y agoUnfortunately, we no longer have consistent steering and docking sides. So first you're going to have to rebuild a lot of ships.
- lardo 3y agoMy understanding is that port’s usage is somewhat recent. In the English sailing world the opposite of starboard was larboard. The royal navy made the change within the last few hundred years.
- greesil 3y agoOne of the fun things I learned when reading master and commander was this.
- soneil 3y agoThe steering side is now the back. And docking .. in the Mediterranean the docking side is commonly the back too. In Scandinavia it's commonly the front. It's probably for the best that they've been detached from their original meanings.
- TheSoftwareGuy 3y agoSame reason we have North/South/East/West, basically
- michalskop 3y ago"Left side" and "right side" is unambiguous, because there is one given direction (forward). It is the same as "left bank" and "right bank" of a river (it is always looking downstream). For example, Slavic languages usually just use some sort of "left side" and "right side".
- notatoad 3y agoit's unambiguous if you know you're talking about direction relative to the boat, but you don't know that you're talking about direction relative to the boat. your left hand is still your left hand, even if it's on the starboard side of the boat. you always need some additional disambiguation to specify that you're talking about the boat. i've never sailed a boat with slavic people, but i'm guessing they use a phrase like "boat left" and "boat right", not just "left" or "right". also, i've never heard anybody describe a riverbank as "left" or "right". riverbanks would be described by their cardinal direction, like the "east bank" or the "south bank"
- mr_toad 3y agoThe left bank of the Seine is quite iconic! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rive_Gauche https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rive_Gauche
- callamdelaney 3y agoIt's fairly natural to me that port is left but that is only because I've spent quite a bit of time on boats + attaining relevant certificates.
- antognini 3y agoIt's interesting to compare how different professions handle the ambiguity in left/right. In the maritime world they went with an approach at one extreme, where they just use two completely separate words, "port" and "starboard." (Though that's far from the only case where there's a special word for something on a boat.) At the other extreme you have the medical profession where the first thing you learn in medical school is that left/right always refer to the patient's perspective. You could imagine that the maritime world could have gone with a similar convention. But the downside is that on very rare occasions someone along the way gets confused and the doctor operates on the wrong side of the body. The theatrical world takes an intermediate approach, where they use the terms "stage left / stage right", which always refer to the perspective of an actor onstage facing the audience. Then the word "stage" tells you the perspective, but you still keep the words left/right so you don't have to memorize two completely separate words.
- interroboink 3y agoYour medical comment reminded me of the fascinating constellation of terminology used to identify locations and orientations in anatomy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatomical_terms_of_location https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatomical_terms_of_location Some of the terms: dorsal/ventral, proximal/distal, anterior/posterior, superior/inferior, oral/aboral, basal/apical When you're describing something like a microbe, the terms get fairly arbitrary; which is the "head" end of some little blobby thing?
- dogmatism 3y agothe thing that's tricky is basal/apical can be different directions: i.e. the base of the lung is at the bottom, the base of the left ventricle (in the heart) at the top. You have to know the shape of the organ to know. There's also cranial/caudal, axial/coronal/sagittal just off the top of my head
- pbhjpbhj 3y agoThat's some good punning!
- Already__Taken 3y agoposition: absolute Vs position: relative Interesting though the Americans swapped the colours guiding you in a channel but the names have never been flipped.
- Eddy_Viscosity2 3y agoThis is not the same explanation that I was familiar with. The one I heard was that long ago boats didn't have the rudder on the centerline, but was to one side. Because of this configuration you also had to have the dock on the other side. The rudder was called the a steer-board (eventually pronounced starboard). And the dock was the port so that became the port side. So now we have starboard and port sides of the ship from this old boat type. Reminds me a similar bit about some dimension of the space shuttle being limited by the width of a horse's ass [0]. [0] https://dwanethomas.com/roman-chariots-and-the-space-shuttle/ https://dwanethomas.com/roman-chariots-and-the-space-shuttle...
- silisili 3y agoSorry, how is it not? AFAICT this is the same thing the linked article says.
- Eddy_Viscosity2 3y agoYou know what. I read the article and for some reason it did not see the meaning for words. I need some sleep or coffee.
- smitty1e 3y agoRetired USN Surface Warfare Officer here. The differentiation between rudder and engine is crucial. The Conning Officer, who gives orders to the helm at the direction of the Officer of the Deck, will call rudder orders as "left standard rudder" or "right full rudder". Engine orders will be given in terms of "all engines ahead 1/3", "back 1/3" or "port engine ahead 1/3, starboard engine back 1/3" (to put a clockwise twist on when maneuvering). Frequently when on a great circle voyage, one may have the port shaft making turns for, e.g. 13kts, and the starboard shaft just trailing in the water, for fuel efficiency. The crucial point here is that these order terms are like strong data types in code. We do not mix them. In a stressful situation, e.g. the Straits of Malacca, the last thing anyone needs is entropy from a terminology mix-up. Lives are literally at stake. Bonus point: the port/starboard nomenclature is also applies to spatial locations off of the centerline. Compartments go, level, frame (bow to stern numbering), centerline position. e.g. 6 4 2 0 1 3 5 Thus, as a young lad at the end of the Cold War, working on Aegis in CG-57, my computer room was O1-138-0-C. The centerline numbering is in accordance with PESO: Port: Even, Starboard: Odd. To this day, I set up my cel phone headset IAW PESO, based upon the day of the month. Go, Navy.
- bartlettD 3y agoBest comment in this thread, a lot of folks seem to be stuck on the etymology rather than the very deliberate use of special keywords in collabrative working. Sailing, Flight, Surgery; All of these require people to work together, in scenarios where a misinterpreted instruction can cost lives. The Tenerife Airport Disaster, still the deadliest aviation accident was caused by bad communication procedures. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenerife_airport_disaster#Communication_misunderstandings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenerife_airport_disaster#Comm...
- vivegi 3y agoThis question is the cousin of In the North-pole, which direction is South?
- fargle 3y agoWhen I was a kid in Minnesota we needed to learn port/starboard and the colors red/green. A trick that helped me remember is that "LEFT", "PORT", and "RED" are all the shorter words and "RIGHT", "STARBOARD", and "GREEN" are the longer words in the respective pairs. FWIW.
- zarzavat 3y agoI was taught the mnemonic “There’s no red port left in the bottle”. Port wine is red.
- fargle 3y agoNice. Except I prefer Tawny Port, but I'll still remember it.
- Biganon 3y agoI think "there's some red port left in the bottle" would be better ; the negation kinda made me think "red" (or "port") was NOT "left".
- tacticus 3y agoFrom memory the No Red Port Left is also about Red on Red passing for ships
- noxvilleza 3y agoPort wine (in a decanter) is also traditionally passed to the left when being poured.
- Infernal 3y agoI learned “right red dead” in aviation - if you see the red light right of the green light, it means the other plane is headed for you!
- bluefirebrand 3y agoThis would probably throw my girlfriend off. She has some kind of right/left dyslexia. When she's driving and I'm giving directions I have to tell her "short turn" or "long turn". Long turn being left, longer because it's across a lane, right turns are shorter. But if someone told her that left is shorter than right for remembering purposes, it would probably mess her up more when following driving directions.
- CalChris 3y agoAn additional starboard/port issue is right of way for sailboats. Suppose that you're going upwind and two close hauled boats are crossing. Who has right of way? When boats are on opposite tacks, a port-tack boat shall keep clear of a starboard-tack boat. Rule 10. A boat is on the tack, starboard or port, corresponding to her windward side. RRS Definitions.
- chewzerita 3y agoAlso a convenient way to remember right of way while on the water is to use the port/starboard lights of the approaching boat. If you see green (their starboard side) that means you have the right of way, and red means they have the right of way. Just like traffic lights :)
- bergie 3y agoThat only applies between power boats. Between sailboats the direction of wind is what determines the right of way. And of course power boats must give way to sailing vessels.
- Zironic 3y agoThe rule of thumb I go for with boats is that the vessel with worse steering has right of way. For instance a freighter has right of way over a sailing boat regardless of direction or wind because the freighter isn't going to be able to change course in any appreciable amount of time.
- bergie 3y agoFreighters have right of way in constrained waters, but offshore they still need to make way for sailboats. (Yes, I know colregs is a bit more nuanced than that, but I think this is a decent approximation)
- heikkilevanto 3y ago
- darkpatterns 3y agoOne domain where this concept of handling ambiguous left and right in natural language is generative image AI models like StableDiffusion. What I wouldn't give for a clear syntax to define what I mean when I say "left side" or "to the right" in a way that captures a character or object which may be rotated in any number of positions. Running 100 generations with the same prompt and different seeds demonstrates how hard this is to solve using words.
- xivzgrev 3y agoThat was a great explanation thanks for posting
- cromulent 3y agoFor those who think left/right is enough: When you are racing sailboats, a boat on your “left” (or “right”) can have “right” of way because the wind is hitting their main sail from the “right” and yours from the “left”. They will yell “starboard!” at you, rather than “left” or “right”. Easier that way.
- androidbishop 3y agosame reason I use cardinal directions when giving directions, I'm guessing
- dmichulke 3y agoIn German: starboard = Steuerbord From steuern, much closer phonetically to stéor, with the meaning of to steer, to direct, to control
- milemi 3y agoI read that the British word posh comes from Port Out - Starboard Home, which is the type of UK to US return ticket you’d get, if you could afford it, to have a cabin facing the sun both ways.
- quickthrower2 3y agoAnd now with the origin story, I won’t forget which is which.
- coding123 3y agoOh wow, so RV's use the "starboard" side for loading. lol
- geocrasher 3y agoFun and easy mnemonic: Port = LEFT (4 letters in each word, same vowel/consonant placement) Port = Red as in Port Wine Therefore, navigation lights: Red = Port = Left If you remember that, then starboard is just "not port"
- the_cramer 3y agoBack when i had sailing lessons, the skipper told us this story about the sailors coming home to harbour after weeks of sailing the oceans. They returned to their loved ones who they kept in their HEART which is RED and LEFT and since they were sailing towards the port, the RED lights are to be kept left from the ship. It stuck.
- jahnu 3y agoWorth mentioning that harbour signal lights are not the same the world over https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/69030/why-does-the-us-use-the-opposite-convention-to-the-rest-of-the-world-for-colour https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/69030/why-does-t...
- molly0 3y agoI'm trying to learn my 2y old kid "left" and "right". It's hard.
- serial_dev 3y agoI wish they gave or examples as to why simple left and right would be confusing, and how port and starboard are different and better. Maybe because I'm from a landlocked country, but this article didn't help me understand the why.
- 4gotunameagain 3y agoA sailor, looking towards the back of the boat: - There's an incoming boat ! - From where ? - From the left ! Is it the left of the sailor, or is it the left of the vessel ?
- MagicMoonlight 3y agoYou only know which side is port or starboard by figuring out your orientation compared to the ship and picking the left side of the ship. So it’s not actually achieving anything. You could just say left always refers to the ship’s left.
- 4gotunameagain 3y agoPort and starboard become instinctive very quickly, with no mental gymnastics needed. Left and right are confusing, there must be a reason all sailors are using those terms..
- eviks 3y agoThat reason is called tradition
- 4gotunameagain 3y agoTradition is a form of collective intelligence. Tradition is the ritual the Yandruwandha carry out to cook nardoo. Without that ritual it is poisonous.
- 3y ago
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- pseingatl 3y agoIn the US Navy, helm orders are given as left/right, not port/starboard.
- Lio 3y agoHere's a related story I was told[0]: Ships began using centre-mounted, bladed rudders so that they could be more easily docked at the Hanseatic League port of Ipswich in England. It seems obvious to put a rudder at the centre of a boat now but prior to this development rudders were mounted on the starboard (steering) side. That's where a steering oar would naturally enter the water when the man holding is standing on the centre line of the boat. They just copied that position when they first added bladed rudders. Specifically they moved the rudder to the centre so that they could more easily turn around in the Orwell[1] estuary. Something to do with Ipswich's port being on the opposite side of the river to most other ports in the region. The earliest known depiction of a centre-mounted, bladed rudder is on an 11th century seal of the town now in the Royal Greenwich Museum[2]. To this day the town's crest features three centre mounted rudders and a lion[3]. It's a fun story but do take it with pinch of salt as I can't verify it. :) - 0. On a history tour by an old chap with an impenetrable Suffolk accent. Not sure if that counts as a good source of truth but it was certainly entertaining. 1. Another fun bit of trivia, that's the river that George Orwell named himself after. 2. https://www.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/rmgc-object-64185 https://www.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/rmgc-object-64185 3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ipswich#/media/File:Coat_of_Arms_of_Ipswich_Borough_Council.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ipswich#/media/File:Coat_of_Ar...
- foreverobama 3y ago[dead]
- tempodox 3y agoI love articles like this. Snappy, to the point, without unnecessary fluff. And I actually learned something. I enjoy understanding the history of language and culture.
- myspy 3y agoGreat info. So starboard is where the steering wheel is. Like in cars in England or Japan it's the right side. Now I know how to remember that.
- sime2009 3y agoThe words "port" and "left" have 4 letters each. That is how I remember it.
- iamnotsure 3y agoGovernments should use outer 3d body scans instead of photos to reduce the mayhem that mirrors, cameras and screens cause in the unconscious of humans. Also ban vehicles with mirrored letters.
- EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 3y agoMaybe connected, that air vessels today are also boarded from the left.
- varjag 3y agoToo bad there are no good substitutes for general use that don't make you sound like a wannabe pirate. On one of our products (that has symmetric speakers, sensors and lights) we use "proper left" and "proper right" in reference material. The markings are also molded on the chassis. It makes communicating with technicians in the field so much easier.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- ranting-moth 3y ago"The ship left the port". Now you'll always remember that port is the left side.
- somenameforme 3y agoThere's kind of a fun brain teaser related to this. Imagine you're speaking to an entirely alien species in another dimension. And you're trying to describe "left" to them. It's impossible. I say it's a brain teaser only because this sounds highly improbable at first. Forwards and backwards can be described, and even up/down if we assume basic fundamental rules remain the same. Yet left and right? It seems impossible for it to be impossible.
- junon 3y agoNot sure I understand. Directions are relative. I'd describe "left" how I describe every other direction.
- smusamashah 3y agoImagine they use word 'right' for 'left' but you don't know about it. How will you describe true left/right to them?
- perlgeek 3y agoHow would you describe it? One approach would be: you're moving along a straight line, perpendicular to a large body that attracts you through gravity. Now "down" is towards the gravity, "up" is the opposite direction, and "left" and "right" are perpendicular, but which one is left and right, if you cannot rely on handedness?
- coldtea 3y agoBecause left and right change depending on which way you're looking at?
- danielovichdk 3y agoIf you stand with your front to the captain, you're right is his left. That's why.
- brontosaurusrex 3y agoWhen it gets really confusing is when you are on a sailboat and get the command to pull 'altabasa' (you may know it's a type of rope, but no idea which one or even where is the pulling location).
- vrglvrglvrgl 3y ago[dead]
- orestis 3y agoIn Greek boating terms, we use just plain left and right. At sailing school we were taught that left means always the left side of the ship as it travels forward, and similarly the right. We do use different words for the direction of the ship facing towards or away from the wind though. Not sure if the ancients used other words though. We managed to avoid confusion for a few hundred years though.
- cubefox 3y agoFor trains it is just left/right. "Please exit the train on the left side."
- manojlds 3y agoDoes it really explain why or even give a reason that makes sense. The steering was right so right side was called starboard? How does that make sense? So just call right right and left left.
- cubefox 3y agoYeah, it's not really an explanation.
- francisofascii 3y agoIt gets even more confusing when the commanding officer orders hard a starboard. Does that mean turn the wheel left or right? Apparently it depends on the ship. There is the unsubstantiated story the Titanic crew bungled this. https://www.reuters.com/article/idINIndia-51664720100922 https://www.reuters.com/article/idINIndia-51664720100922
- daneel_w 3y agoThe etymology hails from old Norse and the Viking age, before making it into English. Styrbord, the side you steer (styr) on, and Babord/bakbord, the side your back (bak/bakåt) faces.
- Reason077 3y agoTo this day, at airports around the world aircraft are almost exclusively loaded (the passengers, at least) on the port side. Funny how these traditions continue!
- efitz 3y agoA large part of learning to sail a boat is learning the terminology. Everything has a name and none of the names coincide with non-nautical experience. For instance, a “rope” on a sailboat refers to the metal part of a line usually used to the main sail. What non-sailors would call a rope, sailors call a line. There’s a working vocabulary of 50-100 such terms and then hundreds more when you start talking about very specific pieces of equipment.
- dghughes 3y agoIt's easy to remember (if you have to) what side port is since port has four letters just like left.
- otikik 3y agoMy brother in law works in building airplanes. Since a lot of the big pieces are mirrors of each other, the factories themselves are divided into two “sides”. In Spain they are called Left and Right, but in the UK they use the maritime terms instead.
- shaftoe444 3y agoThe first paragraph is the right answer. See also inboard/outboard, fwd/aft.
- benatkin 3y ago> English words: stéor (meaning "steer") and bord (meaning "the side of a boat") "steer" as in steer manure?
- deepsun 3y agoWhat are correct naming for skiing slope direction? Left/right might mean looking from the mountain top, or from the bottom as on maps.
- OnlyMortal 3y agoBecause the words come from Dutch nautical terms. “Starboard” is really “Steer-board”, an external keel on one side of a boat. Therefore Port is the only side of the boat that can dock to the port.
- anamexis 3y agoOld English, actually, as the very succinct OP explains
- okdood64 3y agoYes, this is exactly what the fine article says. It's not very long.
- perbu 3y agoThe old Norse term "stjόrnborði" likely predates the dutch and old English terms, fwiw. Stjόrn means stern, so the back of the boat. I'm guess borði refers to the rudder itself, meaning plank. From what I gather the OP story is bunk. It's easy to verify.
- user070223 3y agoRelated https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_motions#Translational https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_motions#Translational
- emrah 3y agoThese seem no less confusing honestly (do they still load from the "port" side? What about yachts?). They reference a particular side of the boat but as referenced to a specific spot on the boat (where the steering is or was in the past). If you are not standing there, you still need to do some mapping in your head.
- berniedurfee 3y agoSame issue in auto repair. It’d be nice to use port/starboard when referring to stuff in an engine compartment or on a car in general. Is it left as in I’m looking at the engine or left as if I was sitting in the car? I think it’s the latter, but I always forget. Can’t use driver’s/passenger’s side for orientation either.
- ipunchghosts 3y agoPort and left both have 4 letters.
- lambdatronics 3y agoI've worked on two different plasma devices where the engineers used a different coordinate system from the scientists.
- Xorakios 3y agoLaughing at myself for ignorance but I thought "port" was east because sailing south from Europe meant that the ports were on the left, and the stars were on the right and most cargo ships didn't make it back. Sigh