Humans have been traveling by boat for millennia, and some common seafaring terms like ‘aft’ have been in use since medieval times.
While the last century or so has seen impressive advances in long-distance transportation, age-old practice of traveling by sea still has a romantic allure. Whether you’re on an expedition vessel in the middle of the Amazonian rainforest or on a yacht or superyacht in the Caribbean or Mediterranean seas, the possibilities posed by traveling on open water are exhilarating. While there have been plenty of innovations in terms of shipboard propulsion and supplementary systems, naval terminology has remained consistent throughout human history.
The term « aft » refers to the rearward direction on a vessel, and applies whether you’re on a ten-foot rowboat or the longest cruise ship in the world, the 1,200-foot Star of the Seas. hearing « fore » on a boat doesn’t mean there’s a golf ball headed your way; that’s used to indicate the direction of the ship’s bow, or front end.
