The Porthole

Mum and I embarked on our adventure to Bruges this evening via a P & O mini-cruise from Hull to Zeebrugge. When booking the break, I was offered the chance to upgrade to an outer cabin for an additional £10 per person and what this gave us was our very own porthole!! Nothing special really but boy, was it nice to be able to see the outside world as we bobbed across the North Sea! For me, there's nothing worse than feeling the swell and not being able to witness it, stuck in a windowless box in the bowels of the ship.

Sometimes, novice seamen will ask "how comes holes on the starboard side are called portholes instead of starboardholes?" Many old salts are ready with explanations, but actually the name "porthole" has nothing to do with its location. The word originated during the reign of Henry VI (1485). It seems the good 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 and solve it he did by piercing the ship's sides so the cannon could be mounted inside the fore and after castles. Covers - gun ports - were fitted for heavy weather and when the cannon were not in use.

The French word "porte", meaning 'door', was used to designate the revolutionary invention. "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.

What I love about this shot is the contrast between the ageing perimeter of the little window we got, weathered over many years (The Pride of York was built in the 1980's) and the sharpness of the modern industrial view beyond.