Steering a Ship with a Pole
When people began traveling afloat, they soon learned that the easiest way to change direction was to stick something in the water on the side toward which they wished to go and let it drag until the new course was reached. That something probably also was the means by which forward motion was achieved, and so the paddle was born.
Over a very long time, watercraft grew in size and it became necessary to have a specially modified paddle for direction control. The result was the steering oar, a device of adequate length to permit its enlarged paddle to be in the water. It might be fulcrum-mounted on either quarter; sometimes oars were placed on both quarters with a pole connecting their inboard ends to unify their use. In the Viking age, Norsemen usually hung their steering oars on the right side, which came to be known as the “steerbord,” the steering side—present-day starboard. (The other side, over which cargo was taken aboard or discharged, was called the “ladebord,” the loading board—larboard.)
In the later Middle Ages, ships, especially in northern waters, evolved into decked craft, causing the steering oar to grow longer and therefore more difficult to control. This resulted in the creation, in about the 12th century, of the centerline-hung rudder, the upper end of which rose high enough above the stern post to permit a tiller to be attached, whereby the new device could be controlled. An example is to be seen in the Bremen cog, a 14th-century trading vessel preserved in Bremerhaven, Germany.
As still more time went by, fighting platforms were erected above the deck at either extremity—the birth of the forecastle and sterncastle. These platforms, in turn, came to be enclosed, at first to provide a modicum of protection for fighters stationed there, and later completely enclosed to become quarters for senior officers, far removed from the stench with which the era’s ships invariably were infused. But even then, the steersman at the tiller remained lord of the breezeway beneath.
As the ships grew, steering them required more effort than possible by a lone man, or even two, on the tiller. The response was to rig relieving tackles to either side, each of which had a team of men to provide the muscle. Steering in this manner, striving for coordinated action on either side while the men involved also sought to maintain their balance, was almost impossible. Conning officers were better able to guide their ships through sail-handling than with rudders.
This sad state of affairs lasted for about three centuries. Then, in the 1590s, the first record of something called a whipstaff appeared. It was a device to permit the steering of a ship from one deck above the level of the tiller. A lubricated, leather gasketed hole in the deck allowed the passage of a long pole below, where it was attached to the end of the tiller. The upper portion of the pole, six feet or more in height, was the lever used by the helmsman to control the rudder. The device permitted “remote control,” but that was about its only advantage.
To steer, the helmsman pushed the pole to left or right to swing the rudder accordingly. As he swung the pole, the tiller moved in the opposite direction and permitted the rudder to achieve an angle of up to about 15 degrees. This movement also slid the pole down through the gasket, reducing the amount of leverage available to the helmsman and making the start of any return action quite difficult.
To further complicate matters, the helmsman was in an almost totally enclosed location. He might see only a portion of the sails and nothing at all outboard. Maintaining a heading meant relying completely on a compass, if one was available, and timely orders from the conning officer. Sailing close to the wind was out of the question because of the danger of oversteering and causing the ship to be taken aback and possibly putting damaging force on the spars and rigging.
A later development replaced the leather gasket with a wooden cylinder supported by axles at both ends that rested in a fore-and-aft slot along the ship’s centerline. The whipstaff fit through a greased hole in the rowle, as the cylinder was called, and rotated to port or starboard on its axles. It was a much more durable arrangement and gave better leverage to the fulcrum. Additionally, a greased rail, or sweep, was installed immediately under the tiller to counter the downward pressure of the whipstaff and reduce the likelihood of failure.
An original whipstaff can be found on board the Swedish 64-gun warship Vasa. This vessel was discovered on the bottom just outside Stockholm Harbor, where she had sunk on her maiden voyage in 1628. Raised in 1961, she is displayed in her magnificent riot of colorful decoration at Stockholm’s Vasa Museum. The steering compartment is located on the main deck just forward of the mizzenmast and flag officer’s quarters. It rises a short distance above the weather deck with an opening in its upper, forward face—called a companion—permitting the helmsman a limited outside view. Unfortunately, it only is seen in person by the resident staff and a small number of selected scholars, as the ship’s 400-year-old timbers would not long survive the constant passage of hundreds of feet.
The whipstaff held sway for little more than a century. Sometime late in the 17th century, someone, probably a northern European, realized that the leads of relieving tackle might be extended and directed through blocks to a point on the weather deck where the rudder might be controlled by a wheel. The first documented reference to a ship’s wheel is from the first decade of the 18th century. The helmsman was again in a position to observe his surroundings and respond accordingly. The device first appeared in the largest ships of the time, then gradually became the standard of the maritime world.
Commander Martin, a Golden Life member of the U.S. Naval Institute, has been contributing to its magazines for more than 50 years.