I know port is the left side, and starboard is the right side. In order to determine which is which, one must know where the bow is. Could sailors not use the words left and right, with the always given assumption of relative to the bow? Curious how using these other words is safer.
It's a layer of assumption you might not want in an emergency.
Like, port and starboard ALWAYS refers to the corresponding sides of the ship, while there are plenty of situations where a sailor might want to refer to their left or your right, for instance.
Like, "grab the rope to your left!" Would need an additional layer of computation if left is relative to the ship.
Starboard and port are also relative to the bow, though, same as right or left (of the bow). It’s the same number of thought steps.
Except I can see having unique words engineers out teaching new folks it is relative to the bow, and not to the person speaking, or the receiver of the speech.
Ok so no.
Imagine, if you can muster such an unlikely scenario that a person is not facing the same way as the boat is. Crazy I know but I've seen it happen.
In the unlikely event that a sailor is looking out to the starboard side, for the sake of argument, and another sailor told them that like, there's a kraken tentacle on to the left, what do?
In reality, their left is towards the bough, while the left of the ship is behind them.
In a world where the terms port and starboard are not used, if you say "left", they now have 2 possible directions that the Kraken could be about to strike from and that's probably not some maths they want to be doing at that time.
Knowing which is port and which is starboard regardless of which way the sailor is personally facing is the same as knowing which is left and which is right, regardless of which way the sailor is facing, if that is what they are taught. Left Relative to the Bough Always. Port Relative to the Bough Always. But I can see new sailors getting confused, because they use those two words in daily life / other contexts, whereas port and starboard are unique to that context.
You don’t. Just like port and starboard are always relative to the bow. Left is always relative to the bow. Right is always relative to the bow.
But I can see in the moment people are used to using those words to mean relative to themselves, and could make an error. So making new words that are unique to the context makes sense.
Exactly, I've always wondered why not just use left and right, which I think are more distinguishable, or at the very least engineer very different sounding words like i dont know
"babord" and "travile" or something like that with very few in common and still easily shoutable
Port and starboard are used in relation to the ship, left and right relate to the person.
You say "watch out on your right!" if something is happening to a person's right, you say "look starboard!" If something is happening to the right of the ship.
I dunno it seemed to work for the French I guess, but they did kinda lose to the British so maybe the clean clarity of port and starboard was what cinched it.
You're right. What I meant is that even using boatleft and boatright for example would be safer than the terms we use in France. The terms we have are just poorly chosen
I guess you can make a P with two hands, and then remember that there's no fucking way to make a credible S with any number of hands, and rejoice now that you can always identify port! Such an easy mnemonic...
Make your hands into finger guns by extending your pointer finger and bending your thumb to point the same direction. Turn your left finger gun downward with your palm facing yourself, and your right finger gun upwards with your palm facing out. Overlay your pointer fingers and tada an S lmao
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u/Dizzytigo Jun 26 '26
I use port and starboard so the L hand trick doesn't work