Ever wondered why the terms \u201cPort\u201d and \u201cStarboard\u201d are used to denote Left and Right side on ships? Well, we wondered and went on to find the answer for you. Read on to know the interesting story behind it…<\/p>\n
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During earlier days, boats\/ships used to have rudders on their centre line. Boats\/ Ships were controlled using a steering oar. As it is very common that most of the people are right handed in the world. Similarly most of the sailors were right handed, so the steering oar used to control the ship was placed over or through the right side of the stern.<\/p>\n
Thus most of the sailors used to call the right side as the \u201cSteering Side\u201d, which soon became \u201cStarboard\u201d. The word \u201cStarboard\u201d is formed by combining two old words: st\u00e9or (meaning \u201csteer\u201d) and bord (meaning \u201cthe side of a boat\u201d). As the size of ships grew, so did the steering oar, making it much easier to make fast a ship to a dock on the side opposite the oar. This side was known as \u201clarboard\u201d, or \u201cthe loading side.\u201d As the time passed, it became evident that \u201clarboard\u201d is very easily confused with \u201cstarboard\u201d during communications. Hence it was replaced with the word \u201cport\u201d as this was the side that faced the port, allowing cargo to be loaded or discharged. That is how the terms \u201cPort\u201d and \u201cStarboard\u201d came in existence. Since \u201cPort\u201d and \u201cStarboard\u201d never change. They are unambiguous references that are independent of a mariner\u2019s orientation. Thus removing the chances of any ambiguity. Hence Sailors prefer to use these nautical terms instead of left and right to avoid confusion.<\/p>\n
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Ever wondered why the terms \u201cPort\u201d and \u201cStarboard\u201d are used to denote Left and Right side on ships? Well, we wondered and went on to find the answer for you. Read on to know the interesting story behind it…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[180],"tags":[],"post_series":[],"class_list":["post-71848","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-quite-interesting-en-au","entry","no-media"],"yoast_head":"\n