Which side of ship is port side and which is starboard side?

Answer 1

The word starboard comes from Old English steorbord, which means the side from which the ship is steered. Earlier before ships had rudder on their center line to steer them they were steered using the rows. Most of the rowers were right handed, so it was common for the ships to have bigger oars on its right side to assist in steering the ship. So naturally the right side of the ship was called steorbord side of the ship. The ship would naturally berthed on the left side to avoid damage to the large oars on the right side. Earlier the left side of the ship used to be called larboard side, but it was easy to get confused in high winds between starboard and larboard. So larboard side was replaced by port side. In short the right side of the ship is called the STARBOARD SIDE and the left side of the ship is called PORT SIDE.