Talk:Tiller

National Maritime Museum as source

The NMM reference explains the scene in the movie by describing the practice on British merchant ships at the start of C20. What happened in the movie was what happened in real life, according to this reliable source. Tagged {{failed verification}} for repeatedly adding "incorrectly". The preceding reference, although highly dubious as sourced from a novel, says exactly the same. We should be putting this to bed now, not letting it drag on for months. --Old Moonraker (talk) 09:12, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

It's really incorrect in the film: The NMM reference correctly says: So 'hard a starboard' would mean 'put your helm or tiller hard a starboard'. This would turn the ship’s rudder to port and so the ship would turn to port. So the real action is:

• (1) The command 'hard a starboard' is given.
• (2) The wheel is turned to starboard, as given by the command.
• (3) The tiller is pushed to starboard, and subsequently the rudder is turned to port.
• (4) The ship turns to port.

The action in the film is:

• (1) The command 'hard a starboard' is given.
• (2) The wheel is turned to port, contrary to the command.
• (3) The tiller is pushed to starboard, and subsequently the rudder is turned to port.
• (4) The ship turns to port.

So point 2 is wrong in the film! While the tiller order and the film sequence are explained in the NMM source, this contradiction is not! Maybe the film is the origin of Lady Patten's idea of the steering error as the film suggests that wheel had to be turned the wrong way! --DFoerster (talk) 09:51, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for your patience here. The NMM has the movie helmsman "turning the wheel and the ship to port" in response to the 'hard a starboard' order, whereas in real life 'hard a starboard' would mean 'put your helm or tiller hard a starboard'. Harland (ref [2] at the time of writing) has "It will be realised that not only the bow turned to port, but also the rudder, [and] the top of the wheel...", and this is implied in the Nature reference as well. I'm still confused, but the {{failed verification}} tag I inserted could go, as it's not plain.--Old Moonraker (talk) 10:54, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

Cross post: glad to see the back of the "Telegraph" ref. --Old Moonraker (talk) 10:59, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

This is now really confusing. So helm does not mean wheel? Or what does the Nature article imply? Was the new wording maybe intended for vessels which still had tillers? I don't have this Harland book, but Lord definitively claims that “the wheel was rigged so that the helmsman turned it to starboard in order to go to port”. So somehow we are left with this contradiction. :-( --DFoerster (talk) 11:38, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

So, I found something on this here: http://www.titanicebook.com/wheel.html “On Titanic, the wheel worked just as wheels had done for two hundred years. The wheel was turned in the direction in which you wanted to turn. The old orders were still in use and the scene in the movie is perfectly correct. Some people have dreamed up strange theories involving a wheel that worked backwards, or Murdoch or Hichens getting confused under pressure, but this is pure twaddle, as any real seaman knows. Harland and Wolff were not in the habit of building ships with trick steering wheels and neither was anybody else.

Most of the trouble comes from a careless line in A Night to Remember and a completely incorrect statement in The Night Lives On. In the first, Walter Lord, a landlubber, wrote, "orders to Quartermaster Hichens to turn the wheel hard-a-starboard". He compounded this in the second book with, "in 1912 a ship's wheel was rigged so that the helmsman turned it to starboard in order to go to port". Lord made an honest attempt to write accurately, but on this, as on several other matters, he simply got it wrong. He probably eventually learned of the error, but some Titanic enthusiasts continue to treat his books as Holy Writ and Charles Pellegrino and Daniel Butler have repeated his error. Finally, please don't ask Harland and Wolff about this again. They love Irish jokes and they are still rolling about laughing over the idea of anybody being dumb enough to think of a reverse action steering wheel!”

How to proceed? --DFoerster (talk) 12:20, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

The Gittins reference you found puts this really well, but unfortunately it's a WP:SPS and probably not acceptable as a WP mainspace reference. I think the sources now stand Tiller up quite well, but somehow we need to prise the current "Butler" reference from the RMS Titanic article. This will not be easy as (apologies in advance) it's sometimes difficult to get the Titanic article to change course: there's such a wide range of committed contributors with different, ingrained perceptions and these have been boosted by Patten's profitable misunderstanding from the end of last year. It needs to be done, though. --Old Moonraker (talk) 14:44, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

Wait - I still haven't seen any sources that say definitively that turning Titanic's wheel to port actually turns the ship to port. I've read Hichens' testimony and he never says which way he turned the wheel. From the transcript: Q - "Then "Hard-a-starboard," and you immediately put up your helm? A (Hichens)- Hard-a-starboard. Q - Right over? A- Yes. Q - What is it, 35 degrees? A - Forty degrees. Q- Then you got the helm right over? A - Right over, sir. " All Hichens says is "right over", but what does "right over" mean? Isn't there at least one RS that tells us which way Titanic's wheel had to turn in order to turn to port?? Shirtwaist chat 11:14, 28 May 2011 (UTC)

OK, we have sources which claim that Titanic's wheel worked inversely (Lord, repeated by Butler), but they claim it was common in the age of tiller orders (see quotation of Lord's statement above) and not a speciality of Titanic. As the other sources (NMM, saying that the movie scene is right + Harland + Nature article) show, this was not the case. Wheels were connected for direct steering on all vessels (even on sailing vessels, see Harland). Thus, this generic statement of Lord/Butler is wrong. Although the Gittins source is a WP:SPS, the author shows comprehensive knowledge and well explains the contradiction between the sources. As we have no source claiming that Titanic's wheel was differently rigged than wheels on other vessels, there is no reason to assume that it was. And why should Titanic's wheel rigging be mentioned if there was nothing special? Therefore, I don't believe that there will be any source directly explaining the wheel rigging of Titanic. --DFoerster (talk) 22:53, 28 May 2011 (UTC)

It seems to me that "generic statements" are all there is to work with, which was my original point. If we agree that there is no available source that tells us how Titanic's wheel actually worked, I don't see the justification for stating definitively here which way Titanic's wheel was turned. There only seems to be support for stating in general terms that direct steering was employed on some ships, but not necessarily on Titanic. Do we know that Butler simply repeated what Lord said, or did he do his own research? If Lord and Butler are wrong, we need something more definitive than the sources we have here. As for Gittins, he doesn't say how he knows what he says is fact. Has anybody ever asked Harland and Wolff how they built their ship in this regard? They should know. So far it comes down to this - Some RS claim 'direct steering' was common, other RS say 'reverse steering' was common. So which RS do we believe, and why?Shirtwaist chat 08:26, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

In principle, I would trust a Nature article most. But, fortunately, my assumption that there is no source mentioning how the wheel was rigged was wrong. I found this in Bruce Beveridge's Titanic - The Ship Magnificient, Vol.1, p523: “Titanic's main steering wheel acted the same as did the wheel on all British vessels of the era in that it was turned in the opposite direction to the helm command. To ‘starboard the helm’, the top of the wheel was turned to port and the ship's head turned to port. To ‘port the helm’, the top of the wheel was turned to starboard. Relative to the sequence of events on the night of Titanic's sinking, this had, and even still has, caused endless confusion to modern mariners and historians alike. When Quartermatser Hichens received the order ‘har-a-starboard’, he was being given the command to turn the wheel counter-clockwise, thus turning the bow to port.” This is fully unambiguous, and as Beveridge is the most reliable source regarding technical details I hope that the facts are definitivly clear now and this discussion ends. --DFoerster (talk) 14:42, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

Excellent find! Now we can put this to bed --Old Moonraker (talk) 15:12, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

Yep, that should do it. Thanks for that! Shirtwaist chat 21:05, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

(Moving this to comment section)

Parts of the article "tiller of a boat" regarding RMS Titanic and large steamships, (far below) are incorrect. When an officer said hard-a-starboard, that meant turn the tiller clockwise to starboard, the ship would then go to port. As depicted in the Titanic movie and actual events. At the time of the Titanic disaster, steering orders were still given in concurrence with an old tradition. Early ships were steered with an oar and then later with a tiller that would control the rudder. In order to turn to starboard you would turn the tiller to port and vice-versa. So if an officer said hard-a-starboard, that meant turn the tiller to starboard and the ship would go to port. During the early 18th century, the wheel was introduced. Now turning the wheel to port would steer the ship to port, but the old orders stayed the same - i.e., if an officer said hard-a-starboard (as in the movie), the helmsman would turn to port; in essence the helmsman had to turn in the opposite direction to what the officer had said. Confusing? Yes, but this was finally corrected in Britain on January 1st, 1933 when hard-to-port finally meant turn to port and hard-to-starboard finally meant to starboard. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.241.137.116 (talk) 21:53, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

It's difficult to believe that this continued so long without a resolution. So to augment the above comment by 207.241.137.116, I'll give this despite it being arguably TLDR.

McFarlane Gray patented his steering engine in 1855; it was employed in the Great Eastern which was, at the time, one of the largest and most powerful ships afloat. Some years later, Gray stated specifically "The principal thing that I did was to make an automatic controlling valve, continuous in its action. To put a handle to where you wanted something to move to had been done before, but I saw that that would not do for steering. I therefore contrived the differential movement of the reversing valve, by which the rudder or other object to be moved would be made to follow the movement of the controlling wheel or lever." As time passed, the purely steam system evolved further, incorporating such things as hydraulics and a form of telegraphy. As the comment noted, the language did not catch up to the linkage until about the 1930's. It is a fact that the Titanic's wheel, like that of the Olympic, had to be turned in the same direction that it was intended the ship should move towards, although the order to turn the wheel would have seemed to be contrary to somebody who was not aware of this. "Hard to port" meant "Turn the wheel to starboard", and vice versa.2602:306:B83B:CC60:6D99:D2CA:D78D:57AD (talk) 01:50, 21 March 2016 (UTC)