Thank You! I always miss the ‘fun’ movies when they were popular.
In order to have yet another thing to haze the nonquals?
The reason is actually kind of interesting. Traditionally, orders to the helmsman were given as tiller orders, i.e. which way the tiller was to be moved. (A tiller is the lever that moves the rudder.) So if the officer who had the the conn wanted to turn left, he (and back then it was always a “he”) would order a starboard tiller (because if the helmsman were using a rudder with a tiller, he would push the tiller to starboard).
This practice continued even after the tiller was replaced with a ship’s wheel to control the rudder. By then, it no longer made much sense, as there was no tiller. In fact, it could easily lead to confusion (ordering a starboard tiller order when you wanted to turn left).
So in 1913, U.S. Secretary of the Navy (and later President) Franklin D. Roosevelt issued a directive that port and starboard tiller orders would henceforth be replaced by left/right rudder orders. I’m sure that the port/starboard being replaced by left/right was done to ensure there was no confusion with the previous system.
In practice today, the terms port and starboard are of course still used, because they are very useful terms. An object on board a ship (like a pump or a generator) is to my left or right depending on which way I am facing. However, the terms port and starboard unambiguously refer to the left and right side of the vessel, not the observer. That is, the port side of the vessel always refers to the same portion of the vessel’s structure, and does not depend on which way the observer is facing.
So in short, today we still use port and starboard to refer to a particular side of the vessel, but not for which direction we want to go.
Interesting - thanks! FDR was Assistant Secretary and not Secretary, though.
FDR always was a trouble maker.
You’re correct, of course (and I’d either forgotten that or mixed him up in my mind with Churchill, who was First Lord of the Admiralty at the same time). In any event, FDR signed the order in question as “Acting Secretary of the Navy.”
Churchill signed his communications to FDR, “Former Navy Person”.