From the ship’s captain to the cabin boat, the terms starboard and port have to be understood and as familiar as the terms left and right. In fact, it was the confusion caused by the custom of calling the left side of the ship the larboard side before 1844. Because early ships did not have a rudder as we know it today, an oar or paddle was attached to the starboard side of the vessel. That oar made it impossible to bring the starboard side of the ship close to a dock for unloading. The loading side was called the “ladebord” side. That corrupted into the term “larboard” side. However, over time, the term was often misunderstood as starboard. You can imagine the captain of a sailing ship in the middle of a storm shouting turn to larboard and the helmsman mishearing it because of the wind and the roar of the sea, hearing it as starboard. Numerous accidents eventually caused the maritime community to change the term “larboard “to “port.” Port made more sense because it was the side of the ship that faced the dock at the port. The change was intended to minimize confusion by standardizing the terms used in everyday nautical language, improving clarity in orders, and reduce the chance of navigational errors.
The Viking did not have the standard red and green sidelights we are accustomed to seeing on every vessel. They may have had a torch or two, but red and green sidelights denoting port and starboard and port did not become maritime law until 1838, at about the time steamships became common. Steamships were generally moving faster than sailing vessels, so it soon became apparent that there needed to be a way for one captain to tell which way a nearby boat was moving or even if it was not moving at all, or anchored. The U.S had passed an act in 1838 requiring sidelights, but that act did not indicate what color the lights had to be. Two years later, the need became apparent and the United Kingdom’s navigation of 1846 specified that the light be red and green, and a white light to be displayed on the masthead. While underway, red, green and white lights were required to be displayed. While not moving, just the while masthead light was to be displayed.
The lighting regulations were extended to include sailing vessels by 1849.
Buoys and navigational markers arrived much earlier than sidelights on ships. A 1295 medieval seaman’s manual titled La Compasso da Navigare described buoys in the Guadalquivir River approaches to Seville, Spain. The buoys were not the coned-topped steel drums in use today but rather were made of wood. There are also references to medieval buoys in the River Maas (Meuse) in Belgium and the Maasgat near Rotterdam, Holland. Some buoys were wooden casks anchored to mark a channel. Before the prolific use of lighthouses, fires were set by seafarers on hillsides to guide ships. The Lighthouse of Alexandria in Egypt was a major beacon. The European Guild of Shipmen and Mariners in England began maintaining aids in the 16th century, leading to the creation of Trinity House in 1514 to oversee lighthouses and buoys. By the late 16th century, buoys were routinely being installed and maintained on rivers like the Thames in England.
While it is important to have buoys to mark out the channels, it is far more important to have nautical charts. The first nautical charts appeared in the late 13th century. The Portolan charts were in use from around 1270 to 1275. They were hand drawn by sailors and were maps of the Mediterranean and southern Europe, designed to help sailors navigate between ports. They included the names of major ports in red ink, hazards and the note on depth, landmarks, and features important to sailors. By 1450, there were sailing charts available for the North Sea and the Baltic Sea. In a short time, sailing instructions were compiled, printed, and shared among sailors from the Netherlands, Flanders, and the Hanseatic League. Hydrographic services were in place by the 17th century throughout Europe. Countries were producing standardized, survey based charts with depth soundings, tides, and navigational aids.
While it is true that the Vikings managed to navigate around the world without the sophisticated magnetic compass that we take for granted today. They were fortunate enough to have at their disposal a combination of dead reckoning, celestial navigation and environmental cues to sail across the North Atlantic and beyond.
The sextant was invented in the 18th century and made it possible for a mariner to know his location by measuring the angle between a celestial body and the horizon. It made it possible to know the latitude of a ship. It was not until a clock was invented that could keep accurate time at sea that it became possible to measure longitude as well. The maritime clock, known as the marine chronometer, was developed after decades of hard work by John Harrison, an English horologist. He invented the first practical marine chronometer, which allowed navigators to accurately compute their longitude at sea.
Mariners today rely on an incredible invention by Dr Ivan Getting, who in 1960 invented the concept of global positioning using orbiting satellites. In cooperation with the U.S. Department of Defense, his invention revolutionized navigation on land and sea. The mariner today has radar to see through fog and determine obstacles in his path. And, in conjunction with GPS, there is an Electronic Chart display and information system which renders paper charts unnecessary. And finally, the mystery of the depth once dependent on a marked rope is now accurately displayed by the marine depth finder. The first practical maritime depth finder, a device that could measure water depth while a ship was moving, was developed in 1925 by the Submarine Signal Company of Boston.
Mariners today have the benefit of navigational technology that is so far beyond that available to Christoper Columbus or Ferdinand Magellan that it boggles the mind to think how those pioneers accomplished what they did. And in the wake of maritime navigation technology, aviation technology and even space travel technology. What a wonderful world it is in which we live.