Ship's Wheel

A ship wheel is the device by which a helmsman steers a ship, boat, submarine or airship, connected through mechanical, electric or hydraulic linkages to adjust the angle of the rudder relative to the hull. It replaced the tiller, a bar attached directly to the rudder post, and the whipstaff, a vertical lever used to move the tiller from a position further forward; the change required solving an engineering problem, since the wheel own mechanical linkage moves in a straight line while the tiller lever arm sweeps through an arc, a difficulty early builders addressed by bracing a tiller rope against a curved sweep. The device emerged in this form in the early eighteenth century, though its precise inventor and origin are not clearly recorded, and it spread quickly once introduced: France adopted the wheel officially in 1709 and Venice in 1719, and it became standard maritime equipment through the rest of the eighteenth century.