Toward or at the rear or stern of a ship; in the direction of the back of a vessel.
From 'aftward' with the adverbial suffix '-s' (an archaic marker for adverbs), common in older English nautical writing. This form appears mainly in historical maritime texts.
The '-s' ending for adverbs ('afterwards,' 'towards') is one of English's oldest features—it shows how sailors spoke in the 1600s, preserved in their technical vocabularies.
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