Round-headed Rudder

It is more than seventeen years since I brought into use [i.e. in 1779, if not earlier], for the East India Ships, round-headed rudders requiring no rudder-coats. Experience taught me how dangerous the old-fashioned rudder-coats were, particularly in small ships of the Navy, many of which, I cannot doubt, were lost from the sea having carried away their rudder-coat.

The round-headed rudders are now universally acknowledged to be much superior in every respect to the square headed rudders of the ships of the Navy; and I am very anxious that these should be introduced into all ships to be built in the King's Yards, and provided for in the contracts made in future for ships of war to be built in the Merchant's Yards.
[On the Mode of Improving the Navy, in Naval Chronicle Vol. V, p 131. Quoted in The Mariner's Mirror Vol. 30 (1944), p 167.]

Transcribed by Lars Bruzelius

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