A diagram of the ships and associated lights
is the
nautical term (used on
boats and
ships) that refers to the
left side of a ship, as perceived by a person on board the ship and facing towards the
bow (the front of the vessel). The port side of a vessel is indicated with a
red navigation light at night.
The term is also used on aircraft, spacecraft, and analogous vessels. The equivalent for the right-hand side is
starboard.
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. 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whalers, despite the term being long superseded by "port" in the merchant vessel service at the time.
The term "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. Another source suggests a different archaic word "portboard" (see the
starboard article for further explanation).
The word
starboard comes from
Old English 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
Germanic 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
IALA 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
See also
