Ready to take the wheel?

[Colin Hawken]

Nigel #2, Where in Southampton do you live? I'm in Thornhill.

[Alan Hill]

I got my steering certificate before I went to sea (proper). At the Worcester you could do a trip with Everards, mine was on the Singularity (Capt Roberts). We went from Sunderland to Odense to load bog ore and then back to London (somewhere up the river don't know where. May have been a tidal berth near a gasworks ?)
Anyway they made good use of us steering as there was no auto pilot. Capt Roberts gave us our steering certs after 10hrs on the wheel and we did all of that. Good training magnetic compass and quarter points.

Later on as a cadet I did a lot of steering on the Cape York. We always had a man on the wheel whilst coasting and the cadets took their turn on watch with the seamen, in addition one of us was always on the wheel for pilotage.

Later on still I was 3/m on the Villagas and we were sailing from Bristol and the wheelman took ill just as we we had left the berth. So I had to take over and stayed on the wheel all the way down the Avon it was great. Capt Carrivick congratulated me on my steering. He said with some surprise "You're a good helmsman" maybe I wasn't good at much else !?

[Peter Trodden]

For older members (my age) who may have forgoten what they looked like,here's a photo of mine.scan0001.jpg
ttfn. Peter.

[Alan Hill]

I've just come across this post again. I should say that the Villegas didn't have a wheel but a strange vertical tiller arrangement. It was really just a switch, you applied it one way or t'other to get the required rudder angle - no self centring.
Though I'd post this before someone else who was also on one of Mac's small Vs corrects me.

[Captain Kong]

The Valdivia was just like that, took a while to get used to it, put helm on and back to midships it stayed on you had to go the other way to take it off. Some Daft german idea.
Brian

[Roger Dyer]

Hello Alan (Hill) your #14 refers..........

.......Apart from your resurrection of this thread you will, I think, find the subject of 'steering mechanisms' has been raised elsewhere on these forums in recent years.. Like you, I, too, was a former helmsman on MacAndrew's 'Villegas' (late 1963) and well recall the tiller-like helm you described. As Brian (Kong) makes abundantly clear in #15 (and understandably so), it was a system most British seamen found unnecessarily complicated and one that did not have the 'feel' or self-centring capacity of the hydraulic systems more commonplace on British-built vessels of the time. Apart from the 'tiller', other variations included the 'push-button' system, consisting of two largish buttons, red (port) and green (stbd). The longer a button was held down, the greater the amount of helm applied. Another resembled the small half-wheel found on the joystick of an aircraft. Not only required to follow a course, there was also need for the helmsman to keep a watchful eye on the helm indicator. Although, seemingly, more labour intensive, it could be argued that in rough weather there was less physical demand upon the helmsman, but apart from that I could see no other, obvious, advantage.

During the 1950's, most of the new-builds ordered by MacAndrew's and U.B.C. came from Rendsberg and other West German shipyards and, accordingly, were fitted with systems similar to those I describe.


...............Roger

[j.sabourn]

Personally I still prefer a wheel. Seems appropriate. You don't drive a car with a tiller or buttons, why drive a ship that way. Specialized ships are different as minute accurate steering is required and you are assisting a computer with slight variations by the use of buttons, different ball game. The old telemotor system was quite adequate for its requirements, as long as the system was purged of air at frequent intervals. Sometimes modernisation is not always the better. John Sabourn

[Doc Vernon]

For older members (my age) who may have forgoten what they looked like,here's a photo of mine.scan0001.jpg
ttfn. Peter.

Peter
I have definitely forgotten what I look like LOL!
Cheers

[happy daze john in oz]

Peter
I have definitely forgotten what I look like LOL!
Cheers

I told you not to throw all the mirrors away, knew you would nedd them again one day

[j.sabourn]

Ref. the steering cert. of peter T. Were you issued with an eye patch for your trick on the wheel. To keep in character with the ship Cyclops. Cheers John S.