# Hastie's and Browns-Steering Gears



## david freeman (Jan 26, 2006)

Never had much problems or experiance in having to do invasive repairs on any steering gears. It was quite pleasant on watch inspecting the steeing flat, and listening to the purr and hum of a Browns Ram Type gear with a slipper plate hydraulic pump, or a Hasties Gear Ram Type or towards the late 60's the rotary steering gears on tankers of the fleet over 12KDWT upto 70KDWT, and the associated rotary hydraulic pump.


----------



## Varley (Oct 1, 2006)

david freeman said:


> Never had much problems or experiance in having to do invasive repairs on any steering gears. It was quite pleasant on watch inspecting the steeing flat, and listening to the purr and hum of a Browns Ram Type gear with a slipper plate hydraulic pump, or a Hasties Gear Ram Type or towards the late 60's the rotary steering gears on tankers of the fleet over 12KDWT upto 70KDWT, and the associated rotary hydraulic pump.


It would be interesting to know the failure rate of post Amoco Cadiz steering gear versus the 'post Victorian' in use until then. We had a complete class miswired at building so that the autochangeover system would have cut off the closed circuit and run the leaking one to destruction - fortunately discovered before there was a 
an opprotunity for calamity (althought well into their service life). One of the same class did go aground because one steering motor was fed from the EMergency switchboard - (another story but a favourite which I have probably already told).

To watch a variable displacement pump and hunting gear in operation showed you all you needed to know of an analgue control system - no diagrams just polished pig iron!


----------



## Ian J. Huckin (Sep 27, 2008)

I did suffer the misfortune of a catastrophic steering gear failure....I posted it here along with some photos. You should find it interesting. If I find it I will repost it. It was under something like Your Best Repair While At Sea.

By the way, a constant speed variable delivery Hastie pump had to be the sweetest thing going...I work a lot with hydraulics building Hydro Electric Power Stations and in most cases the hydraulic pumps are screaming, noisy heaps of crap!


----------



## R58484956 (Apr 19, 2004)

On the old QE there was an engineer permanetly on watch in the Steering Gear room, and boy was it noisy in rough weather down there plus a bit of up and down movement of the ship. Manned by a 7th or 8th engineer.


----------



## Varley (Oct 1, 2006)

Ian J. Huckin said:


> I did suffer the misfortune of a catastrophic steering gear failure....I posted it here along with some photos. You should find it interesting. If I find it I will repost it. It was under something like Your Best Repair While At Sea.
> 
> By the way, a constant speed variable delivery Hastie pump had to be the sweetest thing going...I work a lot with hydraulics building Hydro Electric Power Stations and in most cases the hydraulic pumps are screaming, noisy heaps of crap!


Ian,

Thanks for that I will go searching.

As for the pumps - after a fashion of gear pumps and fixed swashplate pumps (ie standard hydraulic stuff with bang-bang control to the rams, sometimes ghastly proportional valve arrangements) I have seen some return to variable displacement systems. In the former, pump failure is not rare. Can't comment on the noise they make but such a failure rate supports your other technical description.

Some of the proper pumps did use very slow motors and I did go looking for a new one a few years ago - difficult.

David V


----------

