FromMiddle Englishladde-bord,latebord, most likely referring to the side of the ship on which cargo was loaded. Changed tolarboard in the 1500s by association withstarboard. (Texts from the 1500s have spellings likelerbord,leereboord,larboord, corresponding to how they spellsterbord,steereboord,starboord.)
larboard (usuallyuncountable,plurallarboards)
- (archaic, nautical) The left side of a ship, looking from thestern forward to thebow;port side.
- Synonyms:port,backboard,leeboard,left
- Antonym:starboard
1674,John Milton,Paradise Lost[4], Book 2:[…] harder beset
And more endangered than when Argo passed
Through Bosporus betwixt the justling rocks,
Or when Ulysses on thelarboard shunned
Charybdis, and by th’ other whirlpool steered.
1898,H. G. Wells,The War of the Worlds[6], Book One, Chapter 17:Suddenly the foremost Martian lowered his tube, and discharged a canister of the black gas at the ironclad. It hit herlarboard side, and glanced off in an inky jet, that rolled away to seaward, an unfolding torrent of black smoke, from which the ironclad drove clear.
2001, Dudley Pope,Ramage & the Rebels:"It means to turn tolarboard."
2004, Dewey Lambdin,Havoc's Sword:The schooner ploughed on Northerly for a minute longer, before tacking again to lay herself half a mile in advance of the nearer corvette, now up on theirlarboard quarter.
2012, Paul Harris Nicolas,Historical Record of the Royal Marine Forces:The Java, placing herself under the same canvas as her opponent, stood directly for her; and at 2 h. 10 m. P. M., when within half a mile, the Constitution opened a fire from herlarboard guns, and a second broadside was discharged before the Java returned the fire from a position close upon thelarboard-bow of her antagonist.
2014, Barry D. Boothe,INFIDEL: Don’t Tread On Me:This time an almost defeated sigh was heard from both thelarboard and starboard gun crews. Even though thelarboard gun crew was up first, the starboard crew had seen what was eventually to be their next target as well.
- In 1833, Henry W. Acland used the term "set sail on larboard tack" in his "Log of the Vansittart" (Ms. Acland d. 197, Bodleian Library)
- In 1844, the Royal Navy ordered thatport be used instead oflarboard in reference to that side of a ship;port had been used since at least the 1500s and was already the usual term when referring to thehelm (ie. sailing direction), in order to avoid any confusion betweenstarboard andlarboard in such an important matter.[1][2][3] The United States Navy followed suit in 1846.[4]
- Larboard continued to be common into the 1850s bywhalers[5] and others. In chapter 12 ofLife on the Mississippi (1883) Mark Twain writeslarboard was used to refer to the left side of the ship (Mississippi River steamboat) in his days on the river, circa 1857-1861. Wilbour chose the terms "larboard and starboard" in his 1862 English translation ofLes Miserables. In his book A Dead Whale Or A Stove Boat (1967) NaturalistRobert Cushman Murphy recalls his 1912-1913 whaling voyage and mentions that the blowhole of asperm whale is "asymmetrically located on thelarboard side ('port' on a modern merchantmen, but larboard on a whaler)."
- ^Admiralty Circular No. 2, November 22, 1844, cited inWestern Courier newspaper (Plymouth) December 11, 1844
- ^Norie, John William; Hobbs, J. S. (1840),Sailing directions for the Bay of Biscay, including the coasts of France and Spain, from Ushant to Cape Finisterre[1], A new ed., rev. and considerably improved edition, C. Wilson, published1847,→OCLC, retrieved7 February 2010, page 1: “An order, recently issued by the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty, states, that in order to prevent mistakes, which frequently occur from the similarity of the words starboard and larboard, in future, the word port is to be substituted for larboard, in all Her Majesty's ships or vessels.”
- ^Ray Parkin,H. M. Bark Endeavour,Miegunyah Press, second edition 2003,→ISBN, page 56
- ^George Bancroft (18 February 1846), “Port and Starboard: General Order, 18 February 1846”, inGeneral Orders[2], Washington, DC: US Navy, Naval History and Heritage Command (NHHC), retrieved2 February 2017
- ^Morton, Harry (1 January 1983),The Whale's Wake[3],University of Hawaii Press,→ISBN, retrieved20 March 2020, page84
