Tradition holds that answer to be the correct one. The reason is because
the steering-board or oar was usually located on the starboard side
which prevented the ship from docking on to starboard.
Selected sentences from my handy dandy book of nautical terms:
"Starboard is a corruption of the Alglo-Saxon steorbord (steer board)
which hung over the right-hand side of the vessel.
The left hand side was known as larboard (loading side).
==================================
And here I thought was because they kept their wine on the Left side to
keep the sun and stars from shining on it and thus affecting the
bouquet.......

============================================

On Thu, 16 Aug 2007 09:59:06 -0400, (N.L. Eckert)
wrote:

And here I thought was because they kept their wine on the Left side to
keep the sun and stars from shining on it and thus affecting the
bouquet.......

Or that.