from Hacker News

Why do ships use “port” and “starboard” instead of “left” and “right?”

by snitzr on 4/18/23, 9:58 PM with 617 comments

by antognini on 4/18/23, 11:17 PM
It'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.
by fargle on 4/19/23, 3:34 AM
When 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.
by drewrv on 4/18/23, 10:24 PM
I 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.
by smitty1e on 4/19/23, 1:58 AM
Retired 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.
by fishtoaster on 4/18/23, 10:35 PM
Because 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.
by tim_hutton on 4/18/23, 10:39 PM
The 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.
by serial_dev on 4/19/23, 6:52 AM
I 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.
by oriettaxx on 4/18/23, 10:17 PM
better https://www.divescotty.com/underwater-blog/boat-side-starboa...
by somenameforme on 4/19/23, 8:40 AM
There'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.
by varjag on 4/19/23, 8:09 AM
Too 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.
by taeric on 4/18/23, 10:22 PM
This 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."
by Eddy_Viscosity2 on 4/19/23, 12:06 AM
This 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...

by CalChris on 4/19/23, 4:02 AM

An 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.

by orestis on 4/19/23, 10:20 AM
In 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.
by Lio on 4/19/23, 7:32 AM
Here'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
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ipswich#/media/File:Coat_of_Ar...
by rmrk on 4/18/23, 10:43 PM
It'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.
by OnlyMortal on 4/19/23, 2:16 PM
Because 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.
by daneel_w on 4/19/23, 11:27 AM
The 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.
by darkpatterns on 4/19/23, 4:09 AM
One 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.
by francisofascii on 4/19/23, 10:57 AM
It 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
by efitz on 4/19/23, 11:41 AM
A 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.
by myspy on 4/19/23, 7:50 AM
Great 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.
by emrah on 4/19/23, 3:51 PM
These 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.
by berniedurfee on 4/19/23, 10:17 PM
Same 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.
by Graziano_M on 4/20/23, 1:28 PM
I 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.
by cromulent on 4/19/23, 4:25 AM
For 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.
by otikik on 4/19/23, 11:48 AM
My 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.

by geocrasher on 4/19/23, 6:06 AM

Fun 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"

by Xorakios on 4/20/23, 3:46 AM
Laughing 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
by cubefox on 4/19/23, 10:39 AM
For trains it is just left/right. "Please exit the train on the left side."
by bink on 4/18/23, 10:26 PM
Related: Why is it called a "poop deck"?
https://emmacruises.com/poop-decks-what-are-they-and-why-are...
by pseingatl on 4/19/23, 7:01 AM
In the US Navy, helm orders are given as left/right, not port/starboard.
by vivegi on 4/19/23, 5:28 AM
This question is the cousin of In the North-pole, which direction is South?
by brontosaurusrex on 4/19/23, 9:30 AM
When 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).
by danielovichdk on 4/19/23, 8:58 AM
If you stand with your front to the captain, you're right is his left.
That's why.
by user070223 on 4/19/23, 2:26 PM
Related https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_motions#Translational
by manojlds on 4/19/23, 10:48 AM
Does 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.
by iamnotsure on 4/19/23, 7:52 AM
Governments 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.
by milemi on 4/19/23, 5:31 AM
I 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.
by TheSoftwareGuy on 4/18/23, 10:44 PM
Same reason we have North/South/East/West, basically
by tempodox on 4/19/23, 7:58 AM
I 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.
by Reason077 on 4/19/23, 11:38 AM
To 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!
by lambdatronics on 4/20/23, 2:20 AM
I've worked on two different plasma devices where the engineers used a different coordinate system from the scientists.
by benatkin on 4/19/23, 12:41 PM
> English words: stéor (meaning "steer") and bord (meaning "the side of a boat")
"steer" as in steer manure?
by kstenerud on 4/19/23, 7:00 AM
And through all of this, all I can think of is "There's Klingons on the starboard bow, starboard bow, starboard bow."
by deepsun on 4/19/23, 1:44 PM
What are correct naming for skiing slope direction?
Left/right might mean looking from the mountain top, or from the bottom as on maps.
by dmichulke on 4/19/23, 5:30 AM
In German: starboard = Steuerbord
From steuern, much closer phonetically to stéor, with the meaning of to steer, to direct, to control
by dghughes on 4/19/23, 11:47 AM
It's easy to remember (if you have to) what side port is since port has four letters just like left.
by ranting-moth on 4/19/23, 8:30 AM
"The ship left the port".
Now you'll always remember that port is the left side.
by shaftoe444 on 4/19/23, 11:54 AM
The first paragraph is the right answer. See also inboard/outboard, fwd/aft.
by java-man on 4/18/23, 10:21 PM
I wonder why more people are right-handed. What could be a biological basis for that?
by coldtea on 4/19/23, 8:51 AM
Because left and right change depending on which way you're looking at?
by coding123 on 4/19/23, 5:43 AM
Oh wow, so RV's use the "starboard" side for loading. lol
by EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK on 4/19/23, 7:53 AM
Maybe connected, that air vessels today are also boarded from the left.
by quickthrower2 on 4/19/23, 5:42 AM
And now with the origin story, I won’t forget which is which.
by xivzgrev on 4/19/23, 4:24 AM
That was a great explanation thanks for posting
by callamdelaney on 4/18/23, 11:10 PM
It'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.
by ipunchghosts on 4/20/23, 12:45 AM
Port and left both have 4 letters.
by molly0 on 4/19/23, 6:46 AM
I'm trying to learn my 2y old kid "left" and "right". It's hard.
by Already__Taken on 4/18/23, 11:27 PM
position: absolute Vs position: relative
Interesting though the Americans swapped the colours guiding you in a channel but the names have never been flipped.
by androidbishop on 4/19/23, 4:56 AM
same reason I use cardinal directions when giving directions, I'm guessing
by zwieback on 4/18/23, 10:04 PM
"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?
by michalskop on 4/18/23, 11:02 PM
"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".
by xiphias2 on 4/18/23, 10:41 PM
They 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).