Originally Posted by
John Arton
The recent spate of incidents involving cruise liners and others, along with some of the comments on here regarding how today's vessels depend so much on computers to control them, along with the plethora of electronic navigation gear found on ships bridges, set my mind to reflecting on how far ship's wheelhouses have evolved.
If you lookup the word wheelhouse it's defined as a structure on a ship where the the ships wheel is situated and the bridge is defined as a structure on a ship where it is commanded from.
Looking at old pics of ships with open bridges made me think that there must have been some sort of chartroom either aft of or just below that open bridge.
I know that at least one member had sailed on a ship that had an open bridge but by the time I first went to sea in 1967, they were a thing of the past. My first ship was not even a year old, indeed we actually did its guarantee docking in Lisbon two months into my first trip, an eye opening experience in more ways than one.
I can still picture that bridge in my mind, central steering stand (just a small hand wheel about the size of a cars steering wheel), with the arma brown gyro housed in it along with the auto pilot, a control stand with the engine telegraph (just a knob that you turned when in bridge control mode) with the normal telegraph alongside it, the periscope above the steering stand to view the compass card of the standard magnetic compass on the monkey island, the voice pipe at the front leading down to the captain's bedroom (it was not unknown for the cap to come off or water to get down it in the middle watch if there was some disgruntlement with the captain), a single radar set, VHF set. Off to the stbd side was the chart table with chart drawers below containing a world wide chart folio and behind that a sofa that had curtains around it where the captain could snooze if he had to be on the bridge for long periods. On the port side, flag locker and bookcases containing all the nautical publications. Directly behind the bridge was the radio room with a hatch in the bulkhead for sparks to pass messages through. No controls on the bridge wings, just gyro repeaters so when berthing the captain would use a speaking trumpet to shout helm/engine orders to the helmsman (me) or the officer on the engine telegraph.
This layout remaind basically the same on every C.P ship I sailed on though a couple of the white beaver's I sailed on did have separate chartrooms situated off the bridge. On joining stolt tankers I ended up sailing on ships that had totally enclosed wheelhouses and the amount of navigation equipment had grown tremendously. Apart from the helm, we had bridge control, c.p.p control, bow thruster, twin radars, twin ECDIS displays, VHF X 3, GMDSS station, A.I.S, fancy auto pilot (adaptive), CCTV, even cargo control room. All of this electronic gear was shoving out tremendous amounts of heat in addition to the heat coming through the expanse of glass windows enclosing the bridge from the sun, when it shined. This meant that efficient Aircon was vital along with sun screens or blinds for the windows, our were supplied by SOLARSOLVE of south Shields.
Todays ships bridges/wheelhouses are more akin to the starship enterprise than the fridges of yesteryear, though even with all this electronic wizardly to assist the navigator, accidents still happen with alarming regulatory.
Rgds
J.A.