The Mayflower in Plymouth Harbor. Painting by William Halsall (1882), courtesy of Wikipedia.

A:  Awesome, indeed: in 1000 AD, Leif Eriksson sailed a 55-foot (17 m) Viking knarr (a cargo ship) with tiller in hand, probably across the Atlantic.  About 1520, Ferdinand Magellan circumnavigated the globe, using a wooden staff (called a whipstaff) attached to the tiller.  In 1620, the pilgrims sailed the 100-foot (30 m) long Mayflower across the Atlantic Ocean, using a whipstaff.  Nary a ship's wheel among the lot of them.

In fact, ships didn't switch to a steering wheel until about 1703.  The exact date remains a bit of a mystery, although, in 2002, divers recovered the earliest archaeological evidence establishing a date for the wheel from the 1703 wreck of the Stirling Castle.  Clues from the shipwreck suggest "both the whipstaff and steering wheel were fitted to the Stirling Castle and all other large ships for many years, at least from 1703 to 1717," writes R. Endsor in the Mariner's Mirror.

The story of the wreck of the Stirling Castle begins on a cold winter's night, Nov. 27, 1703 — late in the year for big ships to be at sea — off the coast of England, just southeast of London in the Straits of Dover. 

A tourist uses a whipstaff to steer a replica of the original Mayflower.  Courtesy of George.

Around two in the morning the fierce WSW winds became "a dreadful tempest...the like whereof hath scarcely happened in the memory of man," writes Josiah Burchett in 1720, Transactions at Sea.  The ship dragged anchor, slowing her relentless progress towards the shallow Goodwin Sands.  She reached the sands, at high tide, and thus avoided grounding.  But, then the tides turned, dragging the ship sideways.  Huge seas swamped her; she sank on the sands, leaving only the stern above water for a few to cling to.  Twenty-one men survived, from a crew of 268.

Divers, 300 years after the calamity, found the 180-foot long war ship largely complete.  The terrible seas limit diving to about 45 minutes when tides are slack.  Underwater visibility rarely exceeds five feet.  Divers, nevertheless, recovered a sternpost and rudder, but the tiller and everything else above was missing.  However, they also recovered the fixed block and other parts that allow archeologists to deduce the presence of a whipstaff and steering wheel.

Further Reading:

"The loss of the Stirling Castle in the great storm of 1703" by R. Ensor, Mariner's Mirror, vol. 90 #1, Feb. 2004.

“The Early History of the Steering Wheel” by John H. Harland, illustrated by Mark R. Myers, Mariner’s Mirror, vol. 58, #1, Feb. 1972.

The USS Monitor Center at the Mariners' Museum

That damned ship's wheel! by David Gittins

Viking ships, Mariner's Museum

The wreck of the Stirling Castle, Wreck Detectives, Channel4.com

(Answered June 27, 2006)