Close.
Tradition holds that walking on the left arose because most people a right-handed, and that puts yur weapon-hand between you and the oncoming stranger.
Riding a horse was done on the left because A) that kept with the flow of pedestrian traffic, and B) horses are mounted from the left, so a person mounting or dismounting in a roadway has the animal between them and the road, rather than trying to do that in the middle of the road.
The way I’d heard it, the countries that drive on the left either didn’t have many wagons pulled by multi-horse teams or were emulating countries that didn’t.
England, mostly. England didn’t move huge cargos by wagon (so the story goes), so they mostly had single-horse wagons where the driver sat on the right. In America (and Russia, apparently), big cargo wagons were more common.
Then France switched to keep-right (for some practical reasons but also out of sheer contrariness and that fervor in the French Revolution that said “it has always been done that way” was a good enough reason to change), and then Napoleon made it the law in every place he conquered.
Basically, the only places that still drive on the left can trace that back to England. Most of them were English colonies, some of them bordered English colonies (when Portugal switched in 1920 they switched all of their colonies except for those that bordered a country that drove on the left), and Japan which does so because England helped them set up their trains and streetcars.
Just to recap the on-topic answers:
The steering of a ship used to be done by a “steering board” that was mounted on one side at the stern. It was mounted on the right side because then it could be grasped in the right hand of a man facing forward. As most people are right-handed, that would be the stronger hand.
Because damaging that board would cause major problems, ships preferred to pass with the board on the side away from the other vessel. This meant two ships coming towards each other would each keep right.
Similarly, you wouldn’t want that board getting caught between the ship and the dock or quay, so you’d dock with the other side against the dock.
Not in this thread, but found when I was searching for this: the side with the steering board became known as “starboard” for kind of obvious reasons. The other side was called “larboard”, but this was too similar when orders were being shouted to the helmsman, especially in noisy situations, so they began to call it “port” because it was the side you put towards the port when you docked.
So apparently ships did not follow the traditions of land travel because steering was done with the arms, strength was important, and most people are right-handed.
I’d kind of hoped for something more elegant than that, but at least it makes sense, which is more than reality usually can muster.
If the rudder was commonly on the right side of a vessel. It may have also made turning more efficient to the right due to that design. Asymmetrical forces. So maneuvering away from an oncoming vessel may have been quickest to go right for both of them. Hence keep to the right.
This is the reason gondolas aren’t symmetrical.
Nice cites. Above and beyond OP specific. Helpful. Interesting. Shows your interest in things and your desire to share with others, even though it takes a few moments to copy and format the links.
Soy un capitán.
Minor correction: The term, IIRC, is right of way, not right away.
Sorry Brain fart. Really?
Cecil’s column addressing this famous issue. This column holds a special place in my memory as it was while searching for an answer to this question that lead me to The Straight Dope for the very first time (I’d never read or seen the newspaper editions). This was pre-internet and The Straight Dope was hosted on AOL back then*!*
A callback to the whole tiller bar thing cropped up when the film Titanic came out. Eventually stern-mounted rudders replaced side-mounted steering oars, but you move a rudder’s tiller bar in the opposite direction you want to turn. If you want to turn a ship to the left you push the rudder’s tiller bar end to the right side of the ship (same as with a small outboard motor). Eventually the tiller bar became connected to a ship’s wheel via ropes and pulleys (and eventually motors and gears). But naval traditions die hard so certain emergency commands were still given in the old tiller bar style even though ship’s all had steering wheels.
This is the reason why in *Titanic *after Mr. Murdock sees the iceberg and decides it’s a little to the right of the bow so he should turn the ship left (to port) to avoid it he seemingly confusingly yells the emergency command, “Hard a-starboard!”. The ensign at the wheel knows this actually means turn all the way to port and can be seen turning the wheel counter-clockwise (i.e. to the left). And confusingly, again, because unlike cars ships steer from the rear once they’re about halfway past the berg (and scraping along it) he then orders “Hard to port!” (i.e. actually turn to the right) to push the rear end of the ship to the left as well to minimize damage.
True of islands, too.
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Wow … so it must be a truly ancient tradition, because with very few exceptions, rudders replaced steering oars a long time ago. I’d guess 600 to 1000 ya in the Mediterranean, where virtually all Western nautical traditions originated (mostly from Barcelona). Spanish gallons had steering oars, but the ships that succeeded them had rudders.
Well actually under the Colregs the vessel with right of way is the “stand-on vessel”.
Well, had there ever been a gap in nautical naughtiness in the time between steering oars and rudders? Because if not, older traditions would still be adhered to during the overlap period, and afterwards. And gondolas etc didn’t go away either.
I meant no sarcasm. I bet it is indeed a very old custom.
Then why did the Stckholm and the Andrea Doria run into each other? Both ships had radar, and both detected each other miles before contact. The Stockholm turned into the Adrea Doria. The collision should never have happened.
It’s already been mentioned in this discussion, but from the Scottish Wiki:
The Doria’s navigator screwed up, in other words, by attempting a maneuver that was contrary to the most ancient laws of the sea.
I saw some TV show (History Channel?) that went into a smidge more detail:
both ships were using radar, but only to find the other ship’s position. Neither was tracking the other ship’s course.
On both bridges, they mistook what the other ship was doing.
Stockholm believed Andrea Doria was coming straight west, when in fact she was moving southwest, and Andrea Doria believed Stockholm was heading northeast when she was heading due east.
Another problem was the Helmsman on the Andrea Doria was sloppy and did not maintain the proper heading and the Senior watch officer did not notice.
I am not sure of this but I believe the Andrea Doria did not signal that she was turning to attempt a Starboard to Starboard passing. Or if she did the Stockholm did hear it and the Andrea Doria did not notice their signal was not responded to.
I don’t buy these arguments for why traffic of various sorts goes to the right or left. It generally sounds like retrospective justification for something that was essentially an arbitrary development. The swords thing, for example: I am sceptical that the immediate need to brandish a sword was of such concern to mediaeval travellers that they walked around, hand on sword, ready to strike down the next attacker at a moment’s notice. I doubt that many of them even had swords, and even if they did, you could just as well argue that they should travel on the right so that oncoming right-handed sword-bearer would find it harder to reach them.
Seems to me that a creative mind can always come up with folk reasons, often involving romantic notions about how life was back in the dark ages, about why traffic tended to the left, or right. Truth is, we don’t know. Maybe it just happened by chance.
All true, and the Stockholm’s crew was not found completely blameless, but… if you are closing on another car at night, you expect them to continue to the left of you, or even drift further that way, rather than to try and swerve to pass you on the right. Stockholm was a little careless, but AD was stupid.
Why do I have it firmly lodged in memory that the Andrea Doria collided with a freighter? I am always a little surprised when the Stockholm is identified as another liner.