Endless rope steering - a South Australian Connection
Many thanks for your collective erudition and eloquence on these topics! It seemed worth mentioning that the endless rope steering system set up almost exactly the same as NG's except that the fairleads were above the deckline inboard of the toerails, was very common amongst the Greek fishing community working out of Thevenard on the West Coast of SA during the fifties and sixties. Skippers were more often than not alone on Murat Bay fishing for whiting, shark, snapper, gar, and snook and many of the evolutions involved in these cottage fisheries called for activity outside of the three foot by three foot aft cockpit. An example might be dabbing for gar braced in the forrard footwell or even the companionway of the tiny sleeping cabin, built forrard of the mast in cutters over 16 feet lod with the Blaxland turning at about 120 revs waving the long handled dab net with one hand, pumping the Tilley lantern with the other and occasionally jerking the endless rope steering line as the school of gar sheered this way and that in the light.
Another favourite evolution made possible by the endless rope was "happy hour" for the weary skipper on a choppy homeward passage from St Peters Island or some such miserable place when, braced either in the companionway, or if the cutter was less than 16 ft long, sitting on a cushion lodged in the grating covering the fishwell, the leather fortified bottle of ouzo and the jar of pickled razorfish hearts could be savoured at gentlemanly leisure.
I never saw an endless rope system without a tiller for use when the skipper was wedged into his aft cockpit. The tiller was more often than not an axe handle which looked very shipshape in this application and proved admirable for the purpose of steering with the cheeks providing again a means of hands free driving for the single handed skipper.
Regretfully, South Australia to my knowledge has not yet thrown up a Chapelle or Leather to dignify and celebrate the beautiful and able local small craft of South Australia now very rare indeed. In their original working configuration some of these tiny cutters and particularly those built at Denial Bay by the fabulous and engagingly grumpy Stan Thiselton were every bit as capable of provoking that visceral lurch of recognition of timeless beauty of form and line that the likes of "Coquina" unfailingly provoke.