Port and starboard vessel's starboard side by green and its port side by red. Aircraft are lit in the same way. Port and starboard Port and starboard are nautical and aeronautical terms of orientation that deal unambiguously with the structure of vessels and aircraft. Their structures are largely bilaterally symmetrical, meaning they have mirror-image left and right halves if divided long-ways down the middle. One asymmetric feature is that on aircraft and ships where access is at the side, this access is usually only provided on the port side. To understand which is which, when a person is facing the bow on a
Kronan (ship) and heeled so far over that she began to flood through the open gunports. The crew was unable to correct the imbalance and the ship laid over completely with the masts parallel with the water. Soon after, the gunpowder store in the forward part of the "Kronan" ignited for unknown reasons and exploded, ripping apart a large section of the starboard side forward of the mainmast. The remaining section rose with the stern pointing up in the air and the broken-off front part toward the bottom. She then rapidly sank with the port side down. When the wreck hit the