by 
As a first time cruiser, there were so many things that were new to me coming aboard. The new faces, constant rocking, smaller confined living spaces, and one that didn’t even occur to me until on board, the terminology. If you are not a boater or sailor or just someone who is familiar with boats, these terms may come as a surprise at first, and it definitely was the case for me at first. The first day boarding the ship, I knew that my fifth grade lesson about ships was not going to get me far, so I took some time to talk to marine techs specifically on the Atlantis to summarize some terms in hopes to help other fellow cruisers who might need a little more assistance with these terms like I did.
Starting with the directions on the boat, these are used in reference to the ship no matter the direction that you yourself are facing. This can almost be seen like the compass terms of the ship. The front of the ship is called “Forward” while the back is called “Aft”. If you want to refer to something close to the centerline, you would call that “In Board”, and referring to something to the sides of the ship you would call that “Out Board”.
Now that was just the directions on the ship, but each ship has the locations named in a manner so that if you were on board you would understand where someone was referring to, even if you both were facing opposite directions. Pretty helpful I thought! The front of the ship is called the “Bow”, the back of the ship can be called the “Stern” or the “Fan Tail”. Either of these terms for the back are used, but the term “Fan Tail” came from the reasoning that there were thrusts at the back shaped like a tail. The middle of the ship is called the “House”. The left side is called the “Port” while the right is called the “Star Board”, interestingly usually called the “Star- Bird” due to the British pronouncing it this way.
Now here it gets a little confusing. If we were to look at the side of the ship, we have different floors, each one named differently. The main floor is called the “Main Deck” also known as the “1st Deck”. As you go down, the floor numbers increase. The floor below the main would be the “2nd Deck” and the one below that would be the “3rd Deck”. As you go up from the main deck, they are called “01 Deck”, “02 Deck”, “03 Deck”, “04 Deck”, and “05 Deck”.
The “Bridge”, also known as the “Wheel House”, is where the ship is steered from and is located on 04 Deck. Above this on the 05 Deck, is the “Flying Bridge” where usually you could also control the ship from, but not for Atlantis.
These are just a few of the words that I have learned, but I hope to pick up even more terminology during my time here!
