Who Invented the Ship's Wheel? G&G #Shorts

I did.

Sources
The Sea Rover's Practice - Benerson Little
The Sailing Frigate - Robert Gardiner

#pirates #ships #shorts #history

[funnelvortex]

What we have to keep in mind is that the 1703 estimate is based on military records and military usually lags behind civilian infrastructure in terms of general tech, both for tradition and the simple reason it costs $ for a the government to upgrade and replace things and governments are cheap, hence why even US soldiers these days are stuck with pitted-out guns from 40 years ago being held together by duct tape.

I find it quite possible the Ship's Wheel was invented a good time before 1703 and was being used on various merchant ships for some time, but 1703 is when the Royal Navy began to adopt it, as stated military adoption of any tech is often very slow even when many in the civilian world have been using it for decades.

Another thing to be considered is that the Russian Navy very quickly adopted Ship's Wheels in a widespready capacity by 1705, but they built their whole fleet up from scratch at that time so it was cost effective in their case to install wheels compared to the British Navy who were still using decades-old vessels, so clearly the Ship's Wheel had been well-demonstrated elsewhere at that point but was just too costly to retrofit on older warships.

It is not at all unreasonable to assume many purpose-built merchantmen (or even some pirates) were running ship's wheels well before 1703. But given records of the private sector are very spotty from that era it's hard to tell exactly when ship's wheels began to be used, but I would assume no earlier than 1670.

[michaelsmith]

When I was a kid a made a design like a whipstaff, but I got frustrated when I couldn't find out how to attach a wheel to it kek.

[sunandshadow]

It would be interesting to find out who invented it and when. I would like to know whether it would be sensible to feature tillers and whipstaffs as well as wheels in a game or if I should have it mentioned at various points that the ship builders have all decided to use wheels for an in-universe reason, but keep the tillers and whipstaffs on shipwrecks and the occasional ghost ship.

[sebastienleblanc]

Guerre guerre vente vent. Wind stream straight tide ! Always face the waves.

[rachdarastrix]

Sometimes I can't even figure out where to put the wheel.