There is a handy encyclopaedia of dates and events. Should I suddenly want to know the date of the Battle of Hastings, I can look it up and there it is, 1066. Then under 1066 I find all the events, historical, artistic, literary and scientific for that year. Turning its pages the other day to find when mains electricity was first laid on, I came across this (1844): Larboard (left side of ship) renamed ‘port’ by Admiralty. I knew there had been a switch from larboard to port, but on seeing this entry I wondered why ‘port’. Obviously larboard sounds too much like starboard and could easily be confused when orders are given. But how do our maritime neighbours manage? We have a common cultural heritage and there should be some clues to ‘port’ in the language. According to the Yachtsman’s Eight Language Dictionary, our fellow Europeans use: backbord (Ger), bakboord (Du), bagbords (Da), babord (Fr), babor (Sp) and bombords (Por). Except the Italians who just use sinistra (left) when giving instructions to the helm — all the others use variations on ‘backbord’.

So how did the British seamen avoid disaster for all those years up to 1844? Well, it seems they did not have the problem in practice. In Captain John Smith’s Sea Grammar of 1627 we find on steering:

Then know, star-board is the right hand, lar-board the left. Starboard the helme is to put the helme a starboard then the ship will go to the larboard. Right your helme, that is to keep it in midships, or right up. Port, that is to put the helme to larboard and the ship will go to the starboard; for the ship will ever go contrary to the helme.

So the helm was ‘ported’ and not larboarded.

There must have been something about the left side of an early ship that made the term ‘port’ both applicable and unambiguous. The Oxford English Dictionary suggests that because the early ship was steered by an oar on the right-hand side, the steer-board side, it was likely that it would lie-to on the left side for lading (lade-board, or larboard) to avoid encumbering the steering gear. So the left side would be the one for entering or leaving the ship, i.e. the port side, ‘port’ as in porthole.

This explanation appeals to me. When I have the cruising gear aboard Windflower (Otter 206) the galley equipment is forrard of the centreboard case on the left-hand side where, for a right-handed person, it is easier of access to the Primus stove, which sits in three parts of a biscuit tin. As a result when the tent is up, I embark and disembark over the starboard gunwale and I will go to a lot of trouble to find a berth where I can tie up on that side. Logically, I suppose it is the right-hand side of Windflower that should be its port side, but I don’t go as far as that.

But if this is the right explanation for ‘port’, why did it not appeal to the other Europeans, especially the Latins whose word it originally is for such things as entrances and carrying? The German and Dutch dictionaries give ‘back’ and ‘bak’ as meaning, amongst other things, a seaman’s mess. Maybe when the Viking crews took their meals on the early ships, they had to squat on the left-hand side clear of the feet of the steersman on the other. Or maybe they saw the left-hand side as the one over which the victuals were loaded.

And here’s another puzzling thing: why do winds always move in the opposite direction to sea currents? A westerly wind blows towards the east, but a westerly current flows towards the west.