PS>I thought Brexit meant Brexit, but apparently not entirely.
It looks like back to the future. The Kitchen Rudder was developed by a guy Kitchen early in the 20th century and were fitted to many ship’s boats of the Royal navies of Britain and the Commonwealth .
The buckets were controlled by winding a wheel on the tiller and were fitted to 32’ cutters on cruisers and above when at anchor for liberty. They were also fitted to the boats carried by survey ships for inshore survey where I encountered them.
While they were very manoeuvrable the drawbacks was the coxswain’s arse was pointing in the direction of travel while he feverishly wound the little wheel.
In cruisers and above those of exalted rank traveled in the barge seated in white linen with blue piping seat covers. It was in fact a 42’ twin screw motor boat with a top speed of about 20 knots.
Yes, those were around in my time and generally had us midshipmen as coxswains. Manoeuvring was a joy to behold in the hands of a good coxswain, mids, not so much. By the time we worked it out, we’d get moved along.
1 Like
Sadly, the Scots are collectively silly enough to want to exit the United Kingdom (over which, at least, they have a proportionate say and centuries of shared history and a common currency), and re-enter the EU (an awful bunch of foreign, once-great-nations happy to subsume their cultures, nationalities and currencies into a bog of undemocratic bureaucracy). The Scots should beware of getting what they want. They have time to reconsider.
1 Like
PS> Hopefully the new rudder has improved control system and is scalable for bigger boats/ships.
1 Like
I don’t know how you get all this information but thank you. That is a beautifully maintained launch but the bright work would be a lot of work down under. The intensity of our UV radiation makes a mess of varnish in about 6 months.
The engineering that went into the helm and control wheel was impressive.
on a ship it looks like the bearing assy. is going to have to be pretty robust!, I like the small boat but i sure wouldn’t want to have to figure that out in a confined space!