U.S. Navy Brass Steering Station – Jered Industries Inc.

Feast your eyes upon an incredibly rare piece of American maritime history – this U.S. Navy Brass Steering Station – Jered Industries Inc. Since 1946, Jered has been designing, manufacturing, maintaining and refurbishing a wide
range of equipment for various government and commercial customers. Jered began as a general engineering design firm, but as the company grew and progressed, a major portion of the projects undertaken were in the marine field, particularly with the U.S. Navy. In 1964, Jered purchased the marine deck machinery lines of the American Engineering Company (AEC) and the C.H. Wheeler Company (CHWC). These organizations had designed and manufactured steering gear, deck cranes and deck machinery for the Navy for over 80 years. (source: http://staging.par.com/pdf/JeredFactSheet.pdf)

The odds that this steering station was made for the U.S. Navy are incredibly high. Both the history of the company and the quality of the wheel are indications of this. A steering station of this grandeur would have been inside the pilots house to protect it from the weather. If the steering station was all brass, instead of wood and brass, it likely would have been placed on the deck of the ship and would not have been routinely polished.

One of the most interesting aspects of the Jered Industries Inc. Company is that the founder of the business has a great backstory. Edward Roderick Davies was born in Wales and lived there until his father David had saved enough up at the Ford motor plant to pay for the rest of the family to come over to the United States. In 1938, Edward graduated from General Motors Institute of Technology with a degree in Engineering and served a short stint in the U.S. Naval Engineering Corp. In 1946, he co-founded the marine engineering firm, Jered Industries. Edward Davies also worked with the NASA Gemini space program, served as the mayor of Bloomfield Hills, Michigan and was the father of Ann Romney, former Massachusetts governor and 2012 presidential nominee, Mitt Romney. (source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Roderick_Davies)

Jered Industries still exists to this day, purchased by PaR Systems, the primary business is still government contracts. Back in 1963, there was a RAVE2 program that Jered Industries participated in. This was a Remote Area Vehicle Evaluation, phase 2 — a program designed to test vehicles from companies in order to determine their effectiveness for potential military use in remote areas.