Stern

Stern

The stern is the rear or aft-most part of a ship or boat, technically defined as the area built up over the sternpost, extending upwards from the counter rail to the taffrail. The stern lies opposite of the bow, the foremost part of a ship. Originally, the term only referred to the aft port section of the ship, but eventually came to refer to the entire back of a vessel. The stern end of a ship is indicated with a white navigation light at night.

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Famous quotes containing the word stern:

    It was her stern necessity: all things
    Are of one pattern made; bird, beast, and flower,
    Deceive us, seeming to be many things,
    And are but one. Beheld far off, they differ
    As God and devil; bring them to the mind,
    They dull its edge with their monotony.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    Me in my vow’d
    Picture the sacred wall declares t’have hung
    My dank and dropping weeds
    To the stern God of Sea.
    Horace [Quintus Horatius Flaccus] (65–8)

    As a people, we have the problem of making our forests outlast this generation, or iron outlast this century, and our coal the next; not merely as a matter of convenience or comfort, but as a matter of stern necessity.
    William Howard Taft (1857–1930)