"KLC Lewis" wrote
I can imagine no advantage to a wheel that operates that way.

It might make some of us less apt, in close quarters, to bang the stern into
the thing we're trying to steer around. Then again, maybe not. What I'm
getting at is that it's more what we're accustomed to than anything
particularly natural or intuitive. I'm not in any way suggesting that
there's anything at all wrong with the way ship's wheels normally work. It's
just that having one that operates the other way would make a certain amount
of sense in consideration of the fact that steering a boat, unlike a car,
generally involves applying forces to the back of the vessel. The front end
doesn't start going the way you want it to go until you get the back end
behind it, if you see what I mean, so operating a reversed wheel from that
perspective shouldn't require any strenuous mental contortions. Picture
yourself at the helm of a pusher tug, behind a long string of barges. Which
way do you, sitting there in the tug's pilothouse, travel to make the bow of
that lead barge turn to port? Which way are you steering to make that
happen? Does that seem intuitive, or do you have to think about it?