Today in Military History

1846 -- The U.S. Navy replace “larboard” with "port" for the left side of a vessel

In nautical jargon, starboard refers to the right side of a ship, as one is facing the bow, and larboard and port refer to the left side. But why these terms are used and how they may have come about are not obvious to present-day speakers of English.

Old English steorboard is a compound meaning a ship’s rudder, that is a board for steering. Prior to the fourteenth century it was common for a ship’s rudder to be on the right side, as opposed to over the stern, of the vessel. The right side was typical because most people are right-handed, and it was easier for the helmsman to control the rudder if it was on the right. The corresponding term for the left side of the ship was bæcbord, i.e., backboard, a reference to the back of the helmsman. We see this use in a late ninth-century translation of Orosius’s history:

Wulfstan sæde þæt he gefore of Hæðum, þæt he wære on Truso on syfan dagum and nihtum, þæt þæt scip wæs ealne weg yrnende under segle. Weonoðland him wæs on steorbord, and on bæcbord him wæs Langaland and Læland and Falster and Sconeg, and þas land eally hyrað to Denemearcan.

(Wulfstan said that he went from Hedeby, that he arrived in Truso in seven days and nights with the ship under sail the entire way. The land of the Wends was to starboard and to backboard were Langeland, Laaland, Falster, and Skåne, which all belong to Denmark.

Bæcbord fell out of use in the transition to Middle English, but starboard survived, even after right-sided rudders fell out of use in the fourteenth century.

The Middle-English replacement for bæcbord was laddeboard, which in Present-Day spelling is larboard. This too is a compound, but what ladde- refers to is unknown. One plausible suggestion is that it is related to lade (Old English hladan), a reference to cargo being taken onboard on the left side, the rudder being on the right making it difficult for the ship to dock on that side. Or it could be from the verb geledan (to lead), a reference to the left-hand side leading the ship, the rudder being on the other side. The shift from the / d / to an / ɹ /, i.e., from laddeboard to larboard, occurred in the sixteenth century, probably through association with starboard.

Larboard appears in the poem Patience, by the Pearl poet, written c.1380. The passage is part of the telling of the biblical story of Jonah:

Then he tron on þo tres, and þay her tramme ruchen,
Cachen vp þe crossayl, cables þay fasten,
Wiȝt at þe wyndas weȝem her ankres,
Spende spak to þe sprete þe spare bawelyne,
Gederen to þe gyde-ropes, þe grete cloþ falles,
Þay layden in on laddeborde, and þe lofe wynnes,
Þe blyþe breþe at her bak þe bosum he fyndes.

(Then he stepped onto the ship, and they prepare her tackle,
Hoist the mainsail, fasten the cables,
Quickly at the windlass weigh their anchors,
Attach the spare bowline to the bowsprit,
Gather the guy-ropes, the great canvas falls,
They lead to larboard, and gain the luff,
The fair breath at their back finds the bosum of the sail.)

Given that larboard might be a reference to receiving cargo, one is tempted to associate port with the idea that it is the side next to the quay. But the nautical term actually comes from the sense of port meaning a gate or entrance, borrowed from French porte and that from the Latin porta. In his three-volume dissertation on Middle English nautical jargon, Bertil Sandhal explains the term thusly:

The ME. nautical sense [of port] was “entry port,” “opening in a ship’s side for entrance and for the loading of cargo,” at least that is the only attested use so far. This does not mean, however, that ports were not pierced for other purposes, such as light, ventilation, etc. We know from pictures that forecastles and summer-castles had a great number of ports, apparently without any form of shutter. In a miniature of 1482 seven guns are shown pointing through apertures in the bulwarks. An invention by a Frenchman in 1501 introduced the method of piercing gun-ports in the actual side of the ship.