Steering casualty…? When I was on a MSC ship in 1978 or so, we were very close to Singapore and the helmsman announced “Captain, we lost steering”. Capt took the wheel and agreed. So, he told the ER to do something with the two props and said to signal a steering loss with the horn. Mate pulled the cord and…horn stuck open. Really loud. Capt said send up signal flags…Proper flags not in box. Slight panic. Lots of ships nearby.
Meanwhile CE had someone go to the steering gear compartment to see what’s what. Found that someone, as in wiper, had been in there a minute before steering lost…and inadvertently moved a valve to the closed position as he went by. So, valve was opened and all was well. It did take 10 minutes to shut down the ship’s horn. Valve handle was re-adjusted to another position.
Probably 15 minutes, start to finish. Captain and helmsman were wringing wet after this. This was in mid-day.