Steering and sailing theory

1. The wheel stands on the quarterdeck, on an axis running fore and aft. “Five turns of the tiller-rope are usually wound about the barrel of the wheel, and, when the helm is amidship, the middle turn is nailed to the top of the barrel, with a mark by which the helmsman readily discovers the situation of the helm.” Falconer 1769, HELM Hutchinson has “either three or five turns”, the midship spoke marked with a rope-yarn and others notched so that the helmsman can feel in the dark how much helm is on. Hutchinson 1777 A ship of the line had two wheels on the one barrel, so that more men could hold it; that is general knowledge and was not checked against a period source.
2. Two holes in the deck under the barrel take the two ends of the rope down. Falconer says only that the holes lead up to the wheel. On a two-decker, with the wheel on the quarterdeck and the tiller under the upper deck, the rope must pass through both decks. inference
3. Two blocks “suspended near the mizen-mast”, one for each end, turn the rope from the vertical to run out toward the ship’s side. Falconer
4. A single block on each side of the ship turns it back inboard. Falconer
5. The fore end of the tiller, where both ends are made fast. Heave the wheel one way and one end is wound in while the other is paid out, and the tiller is dragged across. The rope is “usually composed of untarred rope-yarns, for the purpose of traversing more readily through the blocks”. Falconer
6. The sweep: “a semi-circular frame on which the tiller traverses in large ships; it is fixed under the beams near the fore-end of the tiller, which it supports”. Smyth 1867 Secondary accounts add that the rope runs along the sweep, so that it stays taut as the tiller swings. The plan draws the rope straight, for clearness.
7. The tiller, “a long bar of timber… fixed horizontally in its upper end within the vessel” Falconer, “enters nearly horizontally into the ship, passing under the upper or middle deck transom”. Steel 1794, p.267 On a two-decker that puts it under the upper-deck beams at the after end of the lower gun deck. The wheel is “almost perpendicularly over the fore end of the tiller”. Falconer
8. The rudder hangs on the stern-post by pintles on the rudder and “googings” on the post. Falconer It does not need to go far: “If the rudder, when hard over, make an angle of between thirty-three and thirty-five degrees, it is found by experience to be sufficient.” Lever p.71
9. Relieving tackles, one each side, from the tiller to an eye-bolt in the ship’s side. They are a second way of moving the tiller, described below.

Relieving tackles steer her when the wheel cannot

“Relieving-tackles, used when the tiller-ropes are damaged, have one end made fast to a rope strap, with a thimble on each side of the tiller, and the other end to an eye-bolt in the side.” Steel 1794, part 7 With a tackle on each side, men below can haul the tiller across by hand.

They had two uses. In action they were manned beforehand, so that the ship could still be steered if the wheel or the tiller rope was shot away: “at the relieving tackles, an officer or quartermaster, with a few men to steer the vessel in case the wheel or tiller ropes are shot away”. Luce 1866, USN Brady gives “a quarter-master and two men at the relieving tackles”. Brady 1848, USN And in heavy weather they took part of the load: “In very bad weather, tackles are put on in addition, to relieve the tiller ropes, and the men who work them are communicated with, from the binnacle, by means of a tube.” Boyd 1860, RN

The numbers of men, and the speaking tube, are from manuals written forty and fifty years after Trafalgar. For the period itself there is Steel’s definition and the later dictionary sense: “occasionally hooked to the tiller, in order to steer by in bad weather or in action, when any accident has happened to the wheel or tiller-rope”. Smyth 1867 Falconer in 1769 knows “relieving-tackles” only as gear for careening; the steering sense first appears in Steel.

Who steers

In a ship of war, “the most expert sailors, who attend the helm in their turns”, overseen by “the quarter-masters, who also attend the helm by rotation”. Falconer, STEERING The officer or quartermaster who directs them is conning the ship: “CUNNING. The art of directing the steersman.” Steel The orders on this page are his.

Sources: William Falconer, Universal Dictionary of the Marine (1769), HELM, TILLER, STEERING. Steel (1794), theory §50, p.267, and the rigging terms in part 7. Lever p.71. William Hutchinson, A Treatise on Practical Seamanship (1777). Later: Smyth, Sailor’s Word-Book (1867); Brady, Kedge-Anchor (1848); Boyd, Manual for Naval Cadets (1860), p.337; Luce, Seamanship (1866).

Lever states the rule:

The tiller or helm, which puts the rudder over to port or to the left, goes itself over to starboard, or to the right; therefore, in this position the helm is said to be a-starboard.

and what follows from it: “In going a-head, if the helm be put a-starboard, it will turn the ship’s head to port.” Lever p.71 The tiller points forward from the rudder head, so when its fore end goes to starboard the blade abaft the stern-post goes to port, the water pushes the stern to starboard, and the bow swings to port. The dictionaries of the period read strangely until this is understood. With a fair wind, says Falconer, the words to the helmsman are “port, starboard, and steddy. The first is intended to direct the ship’s course farther to the right; the second is to guide her farther to the left”. Falconer, STEERING

Port for the helm, larboard for the side

The left side of the ship is still the larboard side in 1805. But the helm order is already “port”, because “larboard” and “starboard” are too easily mistaken for each other when shouted. Steel in 1794 has: “PORT. A name given on some occasions to the larboard side of the ship, as, the ship heels to port, top the yards to port”, and “PORT THE HELM. The order to put the helm over to the larboard side.” Steel 1794, sea terms The reason given here for the change is the usual one and is not from Steel. This page says “port” for the tiller and the ship’s head, and “larboard” for the side and the tack.

A-lee and a-weather say the same thing by the wind

When the wind is on one side, the conning officer more often names the tiller’s side by the wind. The weather side is the side the wind comes over; the lee side is the other. On the starboard tack the wind is over the starboard side, so the lee side is port: “helm a-lee” is tiller to port, head to starboard, toward the wind. On the larboard tack the same words send the tiller to starboard and the head to port, which is again toward the wind. Change the tack in the drawing and give the order again. Because the ship heels, leeward is also “down” and windward “up”, which is where the later “up helm” and “down helm” come from.

The orders, one at a time

Press an order’s name to give it. The effects are for a ship going ahead.

How much helm the drawing puts on for each order (20° for a plain order, 33° for “hard”, a point of the compass for “luff” and “no near”), and how fast she turns, are choices made for this drawing. inference

Which way the wheel itself turned is not on record for 1800

The tiller, rudder and head are as Lever gives them. The wheel is harder. The drawing shows this:

Order	Tiller	Top spokes of the wheel	Rudder blade	Head, going ahead
“Starboard”	to starboard	to port	to port	to port
“Port”	to port	to starboard	to starboard	to starboard

That is, the helmsman heaves the top of the wheel toward the side he wants her head to go, as with a modern wheel, while the order he is obeying names the opposite side. The evidence for the wheel column is this.

• Luce says so in words: “the order is given Starboard! Whereupon the helmsman turns the spokes of the wheel over to port, or in the same direction the ship’s head is to go, and this according to the usual method of arranging the steering gear, has the effect of sending the tiller to starboard”. Luce 1866, USN It is explicit, but American and sixty years late.
• Harland and Myers, “The Early History of the Steering Wheel” (Mariner’s Mirror, 1972), is cited by the Wikipedia article on the ship’s wheel for the same arrangement as “typical and intuitive”. The paper itself was not read. modern, at second hand
• Falconer’s lead agrees with it. If the starboard end of the rope comes up on the starboard side of the barrel, turning the top of the wheel to port raises that side, winds the starboard end in and draws the tiller to starboard. That holds only if the two ends are not crossed below the wheel, and Falconer does not say. inference from Falconer 1769
• Hutchinson, describing a drag towed astern to steer by when the rudder is lost, leads its rope from “the under part of the wheel” so that “the wheel is to be hove round the same way as when the rudder was in its place”. A drag hauled to the starboard quarter turns the head to starboard, which is the opposite of what hauling the tiller to starboard does, so the rope has to leave the other side of the barrel to keep the wheel’s sense. That fits the table. inference from Hutchinson 1777

Everything that touches the point agrees, and nothing says a wheel was ever rigged to turn with the tiller. But no British source of 1790–1815 that was read says in words which way the helmsman turned the wheel. Treat the wheel in the drawing as very probable, not as documented.

Sources: Lever pp.71, 76. Steel (1794), sea terms. Falconer (1769), ALEE, HARD-A-LEE, HARD-A-WEATHER, LUFF, NO NEARER, FULL AND BY, THUS, STEDDY, STEERING, HELM. Hutchinson (1777). Later: Luce (1866) and Totten (1862), both USN; Smyth (1867).

The rudder needs way on

“STEERAGE-WAY. Such degree of progressive motion of a ship, as will give effect to the motions of the helm.” Steel The rudder’s force grows with the square of her speed: “if the vessel runs three or four times more swiftly, the absolute shock of the water upon the rudder will be nine or sixteen times stronger”. Falconer, HELM A ship creeping along answers her helm sluggishly; a ship stopped does not answer it at all. Set the way to “None” and try the helm.

It is the water that counts, not the land. “The current or tide running a-stern will have the same effect on the rudder as if the vessel were going a-head.” Lever p.71

Sternway reverses the helm

Lever, following on from the rule quoted above: “But in going a-stern, if the helm be put a-starboard, it will turn the ship’s head to starboard.” And so: “in going a-head, the helm must be put the contrary way to that which the bow is to approach: and that in going a-stern, it must be put the same way that her head is intended to be turned.” Lever p.71 Steel says the same: with head-way and stern-way “the effects are contrary… the head will… move towards the same side as the tiller”. Steel 1794, §58, p.271

Set the helm a-lee with headway, and her head comes up to the wind. Leave the helm where it is and give her sternway: her head now falls off. This is why the helm is shifted in tacking. She goes into the wind with the helm a-lee; if she stops there and begins to go astern, the same helm would push her head back the wrong way, so it is put over to the other side.

There is a risk in it. “Many seamen object to the helm being put over when going a-stern, as a dangerous pressure against the rudder.” Lever p.79, note A later manual explains what could happen at the wheel: it had lines to secure it “the moment the ship loses way; for fatal accidents have happened by the neglect of ignorant men, who have been suddenly thrown violently over the wheel, when it revolved by the action of the water on the rudder as the ship gathered sternway”. Boyd 1860, RN

Sails before the centre turn her off the wind; sails abaft it turn her up

A ship turns about a point which Lever calls her “centre of gravity or rotation” and puts near the mainmast or a little before it, moving with her stowage. Then: “any sail set abaft this centre, tends to make a ship stay, or come to the wind, and all before it, to make her fly off from the wind, and ware”. Lever p.73 The wind pushes every sail to leeward. Push the bow to leeward and her head falls off; push the stern to leeward and her head comes up.

So she can be turned by taking the wind out of one end:

• After sails off. To wear, the mizen is hauled up and the mizen topsail shivered, so that “effort is given to the head sails, which lie before the centre of gravity, to pay her head off to leeward”. Lever pp.73, 79
• Head sheets flown. To tack, the jib and fore topmast staysail sheets and the fore sheet are let go as the helm is put a-lee. The head sails spill, and the after sails drive the stern to leeward and the bow up. Lever p.76
• Head yards aback. If she comes up into the wind by mistake, or is taken aback, the head yards braced round to catch the wind on their fore side push her bow off again: “boxing off”. Lever p.78 A backed sail also stops her; a backed mizen topsail is the usual brake. Lever p.95

For keeping a course, the helm should do as little as possible: “when the vessel is to go in a direct course a-head, the more the sails can be set to counteract each other, and keep the ship in equilibrio, the better… every inclination from that direction checking the ship in her way”. Lever p.74 For a manoeuvre it is the opposite: “the whole power of which… at the time of performing any evolution, must be put in action”. Steel 1794, p.264 Rudder and sails are then made to push the same way. Try sternway, helm a-lee and head yards aback together: that combination casts her head off the wind with no headway at all, and is the heart of box-hauling.

Sources: Lever pp.71, 73–74, 76, 78–79, 95. Steel (1794), sea terms and theory pp.264, 271; these chapters of Steel are translated from the French of Bourdé de Villehuet. Falconer (1769), HELM, which credits the same author. Later: Boyd (1860), p.338.

Six points is the textbook figure, and the best case

Three period books agree. “A square rigged vessel when close hauled… can approach no nearer to it than six points.” Lever p.75 “BY THE WIND. The course of a ship as near as possible to the direction of the wind, which is generally within six points of it.” Steel “The keel commonly makes an angle of six points with the line of the wind; but sloops, and some other small vessels, are said to sail almost a point nearer.” Falconer, CLOSE-HAULED Six points is 67½°.

A modern study of sailing trials reads that as the best a good ship could do: “certain square rigged ships, in certain circumstances, could keep their square sails filled when sailing six points from the wind, and most could keep their sails filled and pulling well between seven and eight points”. Willis 2003, p.34 Manuals of the 1860s claim a little better (5½ points, lower yards at about 20° to the keel), but those are ships with iron trusses and say nothing about 1805. Alston 1860; Nares 1862, both RN

“Two points from the wind” meant two points from close-hauled

A trap for anyone reading a log or a court martial: “Contemporaries did not measure their angle of sail from the direction of the wind itself, as we do now, but from the point at which they could sail closest to the wind… sailing two points from the wind actually meant sailing two points from close-hauled.” Willis 2003, pp.31–32 Lever counts the same way: “When the wind is at E. by N.… she has then one point free; because she is seven points from the wind.” Lever p.75 The drawing gives both counts.

The points of sail

The names run from the wind before the beam to the wind right aft. Press a name to put the wind there.

• Close-hauled, by the wind, on a wind, full and by: six points. Yards braced sharp up, tacks on board, sheets aft, bowlines hauled. Lever pp.74–75; Falconer
• One point free, and so on up; going large, with flowing sheets: seven to nine points. “Sheets are eased off, the bow-lines let go, the lee braces eased and the weather ones hauled in a little.” The weather studding sails can be set. Lever p.80
• Wind on the beam: eight points, at right angles to her keel. Lever p.75
• Wind on the quarter, quartering: ten to fourteen points. The yards come further in. Preventer backstays are got up, “as the strain on the masts comes from abaft”. With the wind two points on the quarter “the weather skirt of the main-sail is hauled up, that it may not becalm the sails forward”. Lever pp.75, 81
• Before the wind, right aft: sixteen points. Yards square. The spanker, jib and staysails are hauled down, the mizen topsail lowered on the cap or handed and the mainsail hauled up, because sails aft take the wind from those forward; the fore topsail and fore topgallant sail are becalmed. Studding sails on both sides. Lever p.82

Dead before the wind is not her fastest point, because so much of her sail is blanketed. Lever p.82 A fast ship with the wind abeam “acquires a greater rapidity of sailing with respect to the velocity of the wind”. Steel 1794, p.259

Between sharp up and square the sources say only that the yards are braced in “a little” at a time. The angles drawn in between are a straight line from one end to the other. Which sails are shown becalmed with the wind well aft, short of right aft, is also drawn from the geometry and not from a text. inference

Leeway: she slides sideways as she goes

A ship close-hauled does not go where she points. The wind pushes her bodily to leeward, and the angle between her keel and her real track is her leeway. “All vessels, however, are supposed to make nearly a point of lee-way, when close-hauled, even when they have the advantage of a good sailing-breeze and smooth water. The angle of lee-way, however, enlarges in proportion to the increase of the wind and sea.” Falconer, CLOSE-HAULED

Falconer works it through. With one point of leeway, “and indeed it is seldom less in the smoothest water”, a ship lying WNW on one tack and ENE on the other, with the wind at north, makes good W by N and E by N. If it blows hard enough “to render it necessary to reef the topsails, she will soon make two points of lee-way, and accordingly run east on one board, and west on the other. In this situation she will neither approach, nor recede from the place of her destination”. Falconer, TACK Tick “topsails reefed” with the wind at six points to see it.

So six points steered is seven made good, and a ship that can only lie seven points from the wind “would only make good a course at eight points, that is ninety degrees to the wind and would thus make no ground to windward at all”. “Most ships, most of the time, made about one point (11¼°) of leeway.” Willis 2003, p.35

Leeway depends on her speed and the shape of her hull more than on the angle of her sails. Close-hauled in a very light breeze “the lee-way is considerable, though the sea be perfectly smooth”; as she gathers way it “is suddenly diminished, and is reduced to five or six degrees, and sometimes less”. And it “can never be considerable but when close hauled; for this reason, it is not much taken notice of when the course is less oblique than the wind on the beam”. Steel 1794, pp.264–265 The sources give figures only for a ship close-hauled. The drawing lets the leeway die away between seven and nine points. inference

Sources: Lever pp.74–75, 80–82. Steel (1794), sea terms and theory §47, pp.259, 264–265 (translated from Bourdé). Falconer (1769), CLOSE-HAULED, TACK, LEE-WAY. Later: Sam Willis, “The Capability of Sailing Warships, Part 1: Windward Performance”, The Northern Mariner XIII no. 4 (2003), 29–39; Alston, Seamanship (1860), §263; Nares, Seamanship (1862).

A sail pushes square to its own yard

Whatever the angle of the wind, a sail presses at right angles to its own surface, and that push divides into a part along the keel, which drives her ahead, and a part across it, which heels her and makes leeway. A yard square across the ship drives her straight ahead or straight astern. Steel 1794, §§36–41 The squarer the yard, the more of the push is ahead. Move the slider and watch the green arrow swing toward the bow.

So the yard is always braced as far round toward square as it will go with the sail still full. inference Steel, translating Bourdé, has a formula for it: the angle of the sails with the course should “have its tangent equal to half the tangent of the apparent angle of incidence of the wind upon the sails”. Steel 1794, p.254 In plain terms, the yard should lie between the line of the wind and the beam, nearer the beam. With the wind aft that means square. As the wind comes forward the yard has to follow it round or the sail will shake.

Close-hauled, the lee shrouds stop the yard

How far forward can the wind come? As far as the yard can follow. “In most ships the sails make with the keel an angle… of 40 degrees, or thereabouts, (some more, some less,) when close-hauled.” Steel 1794, p.253 Elsewhere he says to place the sails “so as to make an angle with the keel of 35 degrees, (the usual angle when near to the wind)”. Steel 1794, p.281* Lever has the yards, when full, “not much more than three points from” the wind’s eye, which with the wind six points on the bow puts them about three points, 34°, from the keel. Lever p.78

What stops it there is the standing rigging. Bourdé wanted 30°, and said it could be had “as in every ship the two foremost shrouds of each lower mast can be suppressed”. Steel adds a footnote of his own: this “cannot be followed in the British navy”, the officers of the King’s Yard having decided “that the present number and dimensions of the rigging of ships could not be advantageously altered”; and a ship with her foremost shrouds cast off could lose her masts if “suddenly taken a-back”. Steel 1794, p.253, footnote That is a statement from the period that the foremost lower shrouds are what the yard comes up against.

A modern account agrees: “the traverse of the yard being limited in front by the forestay and abaft by the lee shrouds”. A little more could be had “by fitting a truss yoke, or by slacking off the truss-ropes. The yard could be also be brought round further by canting down the weather yardarm, or hauling tight the cat-harpins”. Willis 2003, pp.30, 32, citing Harland

Put the two limits together. The yard cannot come within 35° to 40° of the keel. The sail needs the wind some 25° to 35° off its own surface before it will stand full. Add them and the wind must be about six points from the bow. inference The drawing uses 35° for the shrouds and 27½° for the sail, which leaves the yard a slot of five degrees.

The upper yards are braced in slightly more than the lower ones. Totten 1862; Luce 1866; Nares 1862 The drawing shows one yard for each mast.

Sources: Steel (1794), theory §25 and §§36–41, pp.253–254, 281*. This part of Steel is a translation of Bourdé de Villehuet, Le Manœuvrier, with Steel’s own footnotes; it shows what a London publisher thought an officer should read, not Navy practice set down at first hand. Lever pp.75, 78. Later: Willis (2003); Totten (1862), §592; Luce (1866); Nares (1862), p.154.

Griping, and weather helm

“GRIPING. The inclination of a ship to run to windward of her proper course.” Steel A ship that gripes is held on her course only by keeping the tiller to windward, which is weather helm. It costs speed, because she is dragging “the flat part of the rudder after her”. Lever p.74

Lever gives two causes, and they call for opposite cures. Lever pp.74, 84

• Too much sail aft. Take in “the mizen top-gallant sail, top-gallant and top-mast stay-sails… and if not sufficient, the mizen also”.
• Too much sail forward, which is not what one would expect. “When a ship lies much over on a wind, the square sails forward have a tendency to press her downwards, and raise her proportionally abaft, so that she meets the same lateral resistance under her bows to leeward, as if she were so much by the head.” Then, “instead of the mizen and mizen stay-sail being taken in, the fore top-gallant sail is handed… which eases her forward: she then slackens her helm”.

Heeling adds to it. “The larger helm carried in the freshening breeze, is occasioned by the increased immersion of the lee bow, which throws her up into the wind; and, owing to the oblique direction given to the rudder as the ship heels over, much of the effect is lost.” Alston 1860, RN

How she sits in the water matters too

“If a ship be much by the stern, she cannot keep her wind well (because her head will fly off)… and if she be by the head, she cannot easily ware.” Lever p.74 By the stern means deeper aft than forward. The centre she turns about moves with her stowage, so the same sails can balance her on one cruise and not on the next.

A little weather helm is wanted

Perfect balance is not the aim. A later manual describes a ship in good trim: “there will be a lively strain on the weather wheel ropes, yielding to the influence of a single spoke”; let go the wheel and she will come up into the wind “of her own accord”. And the adjustment is fine work: “It does not follow that, with a slack weather helm, a pull on the driver sheet is the remedy; perhaps an inch of the jib sheet or fore brace would have been better.” Boyd 1860, RN, pp.386, 388

The sizes of the arrows in the drawing, and the angle of weather helm, are only to show which way things push. inference

Sources: Lever pp.73–74, 84. Steel (1794), sea terms. Later: Alston, Seamanship (1860), §261; Boyd (1860), pp.386–388.

Tacking: the bow goes through the wind

Close-hauled on the starboard tack with the wind at ENE she heads north. To tack she turns toward the wind and through it, and settles heading SE on the larboard tack. From six points on one side of the wind to six on the other is twelve points, 135°. Lever p.78 For the whole of it she is inside the sector where her sails cannot drive her, so she has to carry her way through, helped by sails set aback. If she stops before her head is through the wind she has missed stays.

Wearing: the stern goes through the wind

From SE on the larboard tack she turns the other way: off the wind, round through south and west with the wind passing across her stern, and up to north on the starboard tack. Her sails are full all the way, so it cannot fail as tacking can. But it is the long way round: she must turn through 20 points instead of 12, “making all her way to leeward”. Lever p.79 Twenty and twelve make the 32 points of the compass.

The cost is the ground lost. A ship that has spent an hour working to windward gives some of it back every time she wears. “It is only on such occasions in fine weather that ships ever ware, the disadvantage being so great in losing ground”; the occasion he means is danger suddenly seen to windward. Lever p.79 Otherwise wearing is for weather too heavy to tack in, or wind too light. Falconer, VEERING Totten 1862, USN The period spelling is “ware”; “veer” is the same word.

The chart shows only how far she turns. The actual tracks, with the ship forging ahead through the tack and running off to leeward in the wear, are on the next page.

Sources: Lever pp.75–79. Falconer (1769), VEERING. Later: Totten (1862), §600.