Larboard

now called port (q.v.). (Starboard is from Anglo-Saxon steorabord, the steer-board, or right side of a ship.) Larboard is the French bâbord, the left-hand side of a ship looking towards the prow; Anglo-Saxon bœc-bord.

“She gave a heel, and then a lurch to port,

And going down head foremost—sunk in short.”

Byron: Don Juan (The Shipicreck).

⁂ “To give a heel” is to sway over on one side. Here it means a heel to the starboard side.

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Entry taken from Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.