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

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

#561

Post by deltarholamda »

fargle wrote: post #135

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.

P.J. O'Rourke made the quip that "port wine is red, and so is your face if you get port and starboard mixed up." Which doesn't help, but it's funny.

For sailors, we learn "red-right-returning," which means to keep the red aids to navigation on the right (starboard) side when returning to port. Which is great, except when it doesn't apply--parts of Europe, Australia, a lot of Asia.

You'd think this would be a solved problem by now, but nope.

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

#562

Post by bell-cot »

hgsgm wrote: post #505
closewith wrote: post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's port/starboard tack, where the wind is coming from the port/starboard side of the vessel. It can be confusing because, for example, if a boat on a port tack tacks to port, the result is a starboard tack (once the bow crosses the direction from which the wind is blowing).

That has another ambiguity: in wind, directions are presumed to be naming the source of the wind, not the sink.

After your first few hours on deck in foul weather, that one will seem obvious.

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

#563

Post by bell-cot »

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #494
jdmichal wrote: post #461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People only have one appendix to start with. Did you mean appendage?

No, that's what I meant, but said in a facetious way. If someone is complaining about lower right abdominal pain that could be the appendix, when lower left would not be.

Unless the patient is one of the 0.01% - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Situs_inversus

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

#564

Post by butterknife »

antognini wrote: post #89

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 s…

We also use "house left/house right" to describe the audience perspective.

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

#565

Post by jjav »

el-salvador wrote: post #553
anthk wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's used, but for the old ones with horses.

> It's used, but for the old ones with horses. This was new for me. The Spanish words carro, carreta, coche, carretilla, carrito all mean "something that has wheels on it", but the meaning keeps changing between car, horse drawn carriage, baby stroller, shopping cart, horse drawn cart or toy car between countries. Fortunately it's easy to figure out from context and doesn't have possible misunderstandings as the Span…

> Fortunately it's easy to figure out from context and doesn't have possible misunderstandings as the Spanish word for straw.

What/where are the misunderstandings for sorbeto?

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

#566

Post by KMag »

jen20 wrote: post #517
jacquesm wrote: post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until you call a doctor in the UK.

To whit, having learned to drive on the left, the “easy” turn that does not cross traffic is always a “left” turn to me, regardless of living in a country that drives on the right. Makes giving directions to others quite interesting.

I learned to drive in the US, but lived over 10 years in Hong Kong, and have driven in New Zealand and South Africa.

When I first moved to Hong Kong, I kept making eye contact with passengers instead of drivers when crossing the road on foot.

In New Zealand (my first experience driving on the left), I turned on my wipers (on a sunny day) the first couple of times entering a roundabout (the turn signal is on the other side of the steering wheel). Also, I couldn't resist the urge to glance over my left shoulder for oncoming traffic in my blind spot when making left-hand turns, despite the fact that traffic approaching me from there would need to be driving the wrong way down the road.

Thank goodness that the manual shift pattern and pedal layouts are kept the same between left-hand and right-hand drive models. Driving in South Africa could have been a disaster had the shift pattern been reversed.

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

#567

Post by jjav »

walthamstow wrote: post #207
petersellers wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also pretty cool that a ton of sailing vocabulary has made its way into common English vernacular. I guess with the UK being the most powerful country in the world at one time (and projecting their power via their Navy) it's not too surprising.

What are some examples? I am English but I know nothing about the maritime world, so I likely know the words as slang/vernacular terms but not what they mean on a ship.

> What are some examples?

We're going to need some leeway on the requirements for this project in order to finish on schedule otherwise we'll have to change tacks on the plan.

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

#568

Post by jjav »

narrator wrote: post #267
jjav wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Though that's far from the only case where there's a special word for something on a boat. Understatement of the week... pretty much everything on a boat has a different word for it. Often for practical reasons, sometimes purely traditional reasons. It is nice because it binds one to nautical tradition leading back centuries/millenia.

One interesting thing about middle ages technologies, like boats, is that the words in the different romance languages for things invented in this era are very different from each other. For example, in Spanish boat words like port and starboard are totally different[1]. Other examples of middle ages words that are very different: windmill = molino, wheelbarrow = carretilla. Words that refer to older things have more…

> in Spanish boat words like port and starboard are totally different

Indeed. Spanish is my native language but I learned sailing in the US so my nautical vocabulary is all in English. I feel completely illiterate on a Spanish speaking boat.

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

#569

Post by sizzle »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #448
antognini wrote: post #89

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 s…

I suppose it has to do with how many frames of reference you're juggling in a task/profession. With boats, others mentioned that wind provides its own frame, and there are separate words still for "left" and "right" in that frame. Then there's space, where it gets even more fun, as the relevant frames - the ship, the orbit (or the "centre of gravity" of everything pulling on you) - are completely independent. That is…

As I suspected from seeing your username over the years, you really are knowledgeable on the topic of temporal space and orientation :)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_temporal_space

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

#570

Post by munificent »

walthamstow wrote: post #207
petersellers wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also pretty cool that a ton of sailing vocabulary has made its way into common English vernacular. I guess with the UK being the most powerful country in the world at one time (and projecting their power via their Navy) it's not too surprising.

What are some examples? I am English but I know nothing about the maritime world, so I likely know the words as slang/vernacular terms but not what they mean on a ship.

A truly huge number of nautical terms have entered normal parlance. Some are so deeply engrained that we don't even realize they were originally nautical metaphors. Examples:

* Taken aback

* Above board

* Adrift or at sea

* Afloat versus underwater

* Ahead

* All hands

* Anchored

* Awash

* Batten down the hatches

* Bitter end

* Boiler room

* Buoyed up

* By and large

I stopped after B. Also, "cut of your jib", of course.

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