OK... StarboardMan sailing a corbita (a small coastal vessel with two masts). Marble relief, ca. 256 AD, probably made in Africa Proconsularis (Tunisia). Found at Carthage.
The origin of the term starboard comes from early boating practices. Before ships had rudders on their centrelines, they were steered by use of a specialized steering oar, which was held by an oarsman located in the stern of the ship and, due to the prevalence of right-handed sailors, on the right-hand side of it. The word starboard comes from Old English steorbord, literally meaning the side on which the ship is steered, cognate with the Old Norse words stýri meaning "rudder" (from the verb stýra, "to steer" or "to govern") and borđ meaning etymologically "board", then the "side of a ship".
PortAn early version of "port" is larboard, which itself derives from Middle-English ladebord. In Old English the word was bćcbord, of which cognates are used in other European languages, for example as the German Backbord and the French term bâbord (derived from Middle Dutch). The origin of lade has not been determined but some would connect it with the verb lade (to load), referring to the side on which cargo was loaded.[1] The term larboard, when shouted in the wind, was presumably too easy to confuse with starboard[2] and so the word port came to replace it. Port is derived from the practice of sailors mooring ships on the left side at ports in order to prevent the steering oar from being crushed.
Larboard continued to be used well into the 1850s by whalers, despite being long superseded by "port" in the merchant vessel service at the time. "Port" was not officially adopted by the Royal Navy until 1844 (Ray Parkin, H. M. Bark Endeavour). Robert FitzRoy, captain of Darwin's HMS Beagle, is said to have taught his crew to use the term port instead of larboard, thus propelling the use of the word into the Naval Services vocabulary.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_and_starboard