Why do sailors say port and starboard, for left and ight?
At sea, an emergency can happen at any time, and it is vital that everything aboard can be clearly identified and described. Where ‘left’ and ‘right’ could lead to confusion, ‘port’ and ‘starboard’ are perfectly clear and unambiguous to a seafarer. Starboard: Boats developed from simple dugout canoes. When the paddler steering a canoe is right handed (and the majority of people are right-handed), he or she naturally steers over the right-hand side (looking forward) of the boat. As canoes developed into larger vessels, the steering paddle grew larger and developed into a broad-bladed oar, held vertically in the water and permanently fixed to the side of the boat by a flexible lashing or a built-in moveable swivel. The seagoing ships of maritime Northern Europe all featured this side-hung rudder, always on the right hand side of the ship. This rudder (in Anglo-Saxon the steorbord) was further developed in medieval times into the more familiar apparatus fixed to the sternpost, but starboa
