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"Tom S" in news:M20Pc.3083$ snipped-for-privacy@newssvr27.news.prodigy.com...

Yes: even larboard has fewer letters than starboard. ("Port," as an English word for the left of where the ship is going, is relatively recent I believe -- early 1800s?)

I have a very minor task in a local current-events discussion group whose organizer, in fact, has long lived on a boat. My job is to provide Port at the meetings so that it can be passed around as people listen to the speaker (an old-fashioned touch) after the modest dinner. I asked the orgaizer for preferences a few years ago and got a standard sailor's line on the subject: "Any Port in a storm."

-- Max

(By the way thank you Tom for your tip on that BV Cabernet, I did get some of it, will probably try some soon.)

That sounds about right, Max. I've just finished reading the first two volumes of Neal Stephenson's "Baroque Cycle," set in the years 1685-1713 and "larboard" is the only term used. One can certainly understand the change as an attempt to avert confusion during emergency manoeuvers asea...

Mark Lipton

I've read a few accounts of "larboard" in the British Navy, apparently it was offically phased out in favor of "port" in the early 1840's, however IIRC "port" was in common use well before then. I can well imagine the old salts insisting on using it until their dying day.

Don't know when/if the US Navy changed the terms.

That said, I imagine most any modern sailor would know exactly what was meant if the term were used today.

Gregm