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.

Read more about Stern.

Famous quotes containing the word stern:

    The rich earth, of its own self made rich,
    Fertile of its own leaves and days and wars,
    Of its brown wheat rapturous in the wind,
    The nature of its women in the air,
    The stern voices of its necessitous men,
    This chorus as of those that wanted to live.
    Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)

    To most men, experience is like the stern lights of a ship, which illumine only the track it has passed.
    Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)

    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)