Research Note

As to POSH, the advertising magazine published in San Francisco by P&O in the 1960s: The title was claimed to be an acronym from the phrase "Port Out (from England to India); Starboard Home (from India to England). This phrase was used between 1842 and 1869 by the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company to denote cabins shaded from the afternoon sun, aboard ships traversing the Red Sea. These cooler cabins were assigned to dignitaries whose tickets and baggage was marked P.O.S.H., and who thus received plsh (preferential or luxury) treatment."

A note about this in Mariner's Mirror Vol. 52 (1966) pp. 89-90, was based on a letter from Dr Gove, Editor of Merriam-Webster's New Third International Dictionary . He said:

1. That it was well attested in the sense of 'swell' or 'splendid' by citations in the OED ....and that "the editors of that volume, Britishers, and knowledgeable men writing in the early , know nothing of any possible connection with the locations of ship's cabins".
2. The earliest occurrence of any such suggestion was a letter in The Times Literary Supplement Oct 17 1935, where the writer referred to it as 'an American shipping term."
3. He goes on to give other citations of the word from Eric Partridge and P G Wodehouse in non-nautical contexts, and then gives a list of nautical reference works in which it does not appear in the maritime sense.

Here it is more or less in full:

The interesting notes on this word at pages 89 and 210 of Mariner's Mirror Volume 52 (1966) may, it is felt, bear some further comment.

1. The reference to Boyd Cable's "A Hundred Year History of the P & O" (1937), which Alan Villiers said he could not trace, is to pages 112-13 of that work, where the explanation is given in similar terms to that quoted by John H. Harland from the P & O's magazine POSH, except that no date is given and the derivation is described merely as a 'tale'. Mr. Lawrence Kimpton, curator of the Archives at P & O's London office, informs me that Webster's dictionary have refused to accept this derivation, and that he himself doubts its authenticity, if only because return tickets were not issued at such an early date.
2. Allan Villiers states [MM Vol. 52, p. 210)] that, if the 'Port Outward Starboard Home' acronymic definition is to be accepted, 'then the word should have been 'losh' until larboard was superseded'. With respect, I do not think this particular objection can be sustained, for the large "Oxford Dictionary" (vol. vii (1933), p. 1137, col. 3) cites under 'Port' an Admiralty Order of 22 November 1844 directing the discontinuance of the use of the word 'Larboard', and the quotations show that 'port' in this sense was used as long ago as 1625-44. It may be that in colloquial usage 'larboard' was 'an unconsionable time a-dying', but the fact remains that P & O did not begin running ships through the Red Sea until 1842, and the last use of larboard recorded in "O.E.D." was in 1853.
3. I confess to a sneaking sympathy for this derivation, if only because my father and I have been frequent travelers by P & O, but the limited research I have so far carried out has also failed to confirm the derivation. If the San Francisco 'Posh' derivation is correct, and the phrase did come into vogue between 1842 and 1869, then one ought to be able to find some reference to it in the literature of the period, traveler's diaries and the like. It might be objected that for a long time it was only current among members of the P & O staff and those 'in the know', but if that were so it would surely put paid to the 1842-69 dating if only because it has not been unequivocally traced in general usage in this sense before 1918 and there is therefore a silent period of at least thirty years to explain on this assumption.
4. (4) An examination of deck plans of the ships of the period 1842-69 also fails to lend support to the derivation. Thus Boyd Cable (actually E. A. Ewart) himself pointed out ("Hundred Year History", pp. 76-77) that in the Hindostan, which inaugurated the P & O run from Aden to Suez, corridors ran on each side between the ship's side and the cabins so that the latter were placed centrally. An account of a run in her from Aden to Suez was published in the "Asiatic Journal" (London) for 1843 (3rd series, vol. 1, pp. 632 and 637) where it is stated that 'There is a shower-bath and a plunge-bath on the starboard side of the vessel' and 'the larboard side of the Hindostan, from the end of the cuddy [saloon] to the gangway, is appropriated to the ladies, who have cabins, baths, and a small saloon to themselves.' That this arrangement was not confined to the homeward voyage may be confirmed by an account of the ship prior to her departure from England in the "Asiatic Journal" (vol. xxxix, New Series, 1842, p. 254) and by a plan of the ship which I have examined at P & O headquarters by courtesy of Mr. Lawrence Kimpton.
5. Examination of a scale of charges published by the P & O Company in about 1850 shows, in the first place, that the words 'Outward' and 'Homeward' were used in describing routes, but there is no specific allusion to Port and Starboard cabins in this document nor indeed any allusion to positionor number of cabins, though numbers are marked on the deck plans. At page6 it is stated that 'Every packet of Baggage should have the owner's name and place of destination distinctly painted upon it in white letters', but there is no mention of any further inscription. It is perhaps of some significance, however, that the tariff shows higher charges for ladies. Thus from England to Bombay the charge was 107 for a gentleman and 112 for a lady, and there are similar differentials for journeys to Aden and Calcutta. A timetable of 1851 at P & O headquarters shows that there was no such differential for journeys to and from Malta and Alexandria i.e.: West of Suez.
6. If therefore it be accepted that ladies had to pay more, it must I think follow that the accommodation offered was of a superior type, in a word, 'posh', if one leaves out of account the no doubt frivolous explanation which I have heard, that they tended to consume more of the then unlimited alcoholic potables then offered by the P & O Company than the gentlemen. But if it was so superior, then the fact remains that the side of the ship they occupied remained constant whether they were going out or coming home. Neither can any consistent pattern be discerned in the arrangements for the different ships whose deck plans I have had an opportunity to examine at P & O headquarters and which are known to have sailed between Aden and Suez (a list of these ships will be found at page 529 of C. R. V. Gibb's "British Passenger Liners", 1963). Thus, whereas on the "Hindostan" the ladies were to port, on the "Precursor" and "Oriental" they were on the starboard side. The only consistent feature of their accommodation which can be discerned is that they were generally placed on the upper of the two decks, which would, no doubt, have been cooler for sleeping.
7. Whilst I do not think that the evidence I have quoted above is sufficient altogether to refute the 'Port Outward Starboard Home' theory, it at least makes it more rather than less doubtful that this explanation is the true one. There are at least two other theories which I have been unable to probe sufficiently:
8. Prior to the inauguration of the P & O service in 1842, ships of the Honourable East India Company carried some unofficial passengers between Suez and Bombay, and continued to do so for some time after the P & O service began. A list of 'Rules for the Engagement of Passages and Accommodation of passengers in the Government Steam Packets between Bombay and Suez' dated 1841 was printed in Messrs. Waghorn and Co.'s "Overland Guide to India" (1844, pp. 44 ff.). From this it appears that the passengers were divided into first and second class, separate lists of cabin passengers, saloon passengers, and deck passengers being kept. 'Every applicant may register his name in whichever list he pleases... choice of accommodation will be given, according to priority of standing on the lists; ladies having the preference for the first three cabins.' Here again, therefore, we have evidence that superior accommodation was reserved for ladies, but no indication that any particular side of the ship was deemed superior. It remains, of course, possible, though unlikely, that rule 19 which reserved to Government 'the right of appropriating a cabin or cabins for the use of public functionaries, or others proceeding on duty or by special order of Government as passengers in any of the Honourable Company's steamers' may have been interpreted in the manner presupposed by our derivation, for evidence was given to a House of Commons Select Committee in 1851 (H.C. 605: Second Report on Steam Communications with India, p. 123) that in January 1842 passengers in the East India Company's vessels slept on the deck, at least in the Red Sea, either because their cabins were too hot, or because insufficient sleeping accommodation was provided; and it may well have been that one of the reasons, though not it seems the principal reason, for the then unusual positioning of the cabins in the "Hindostan" was that certain of the East India Company's cabins had been reported as too hot for sitting in in the daytime. They were certainly more uncomfortable for ordinary passengers, as the parliamentary Select Committee's report overwhelmingly shows.
9. Secondly, it is possible that the usage arose in the later history of P & O, after the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, as indicated by Alan Villiers. I confess that I have not been able to examine this possibility in any depth, but the silence of literary sources and the doubts expressed by the P & O Company themselves make such a conclusion unlikely. It is, I suppose, just possible that the initials 'P. & O.S.N.' standing for 'Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation' (Company) might, particularly in Gothic script, read something like 'Posh' and so again have been misinterpreted, but this is pure speculation. At any rate, the letter in "The Times Literary Supplement" referred to in John H. Harland's note as providing the earliest source for our derivation does not refer to P & O at all, referring to it as 'an American shipping term describing the best cabins'.

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