alant
Well-Known Member
Why are there no starboardholes, SWMBO just asked?
Portholes?
- Thread starter alant
- Start date
mjcoon
Well-Known Member
Fantasie 19
Well-Known Member
I always assumed port as in from the French porte (door or in this sense opening) rather than port/starboard?? What do I know...
nickd
Well-Known Member
According to the Navy Department Library, the word "porthole" has nothing to do with its location on the port side of a ship, but originated during the reign of Henry VI of England (1485). The king insisted on mounting guns too large for his ships and therefore the conventional methods of securing the weapons on the forecastle and aftcastle could not be used. A French shipbuilder named James Baker was commissioned to solve the problem, which he did by piercing the ship's sides so the cannon could be mounted inside the fore and after castles. For heavy weather and when the cannons were not in use, the openings were fitted with covers, that were called porte in French, meaning "door". "Porte" was Anglicized to "port" and later corrupted to porthole. Eventually, it came to mean any opening in a ship's side whether for cannon or not
KINGFISHER 9
Well-Known Member
Starboardsmouth ........ Hampshire.
neilf39
Well-Known Member
Simple really, a Porthole is a decrepit marina so Starboardhole doesn't compute.
RichardS
N/A
Perhaps short for "holes that you look out of when you are in port".
When you are not "in port" you should be out on deck eye-balling, of course!
Richard
johnalison
Well-Known Member
According to a caption in the museum in Charleston, non-opening portholes are not portholes but scuttles, or it may have been the opening ones - it was many years ago.
