How to Use helmsman in a Sentence

helmsman

noun
  • From there, Grimes also came aboard The Orville as the ship’s helmsman.
    — Bethy Squires, Vulture, 12 Jan. 2024
  • From there, Grimes also came aboard The Orville as the ship’s helmsman.
    — Bethy Squires, Vulture, 12 Jan. 2024
  • Max works as the helmsman and hauler, while Virginia measures the lobsters and throws back the ones too small to keep.
    — BostonGlobe.com, 20 Aug. 2021
  • Each boat has a crew of five members, consisting of a helmsman, wing-trimmer, flight controller and two grinders.
    — Jane Tyska, The Mercury News, 23 Mar. 2025
  • Each boat has a crew of five members, consisting of a helmsman, wing-trimmer, flight controller and two grinders.
    — Jane Tyska, Mercury News, 24 Mar. 2025
  • Each boat has a crew of five members, consisting of a helmsman, wing-trimmer, flight controller and two grinders.
    — Jane Tyska, The Mercury News, 12 July 2024
  • The helmsman is a sailor who controls the direction of the ship based on orders from the conning officer.
    — Emanuella Grinberg, CNN, 18 June 2017
  • In response, the captain put a second sailor in charge of shifting speed control while keeping the steering with the helmsman.
    — Dan Lamothe, Washington Post, 1 Nov. 2017
  • Gordon, who served as a helmsman and trimmer on Warrior, was among four crew members with Annapolis ties.
    — baltimoresun.com, 5 June 2017
  • As the helmsman struggled to center the ship, the two pilots also began to argue between themselves, the person said.
    — BostonGlobe.com, 18 July 2021
  • Corlys orders his men to thread the rocky Dragonstone pass at low tide, even relieving the helmsman of the ship’s wheel at the crucial moment.
    — Amanda Whiting, Vulture, 22 June 2026
  • The helmsman reported a loss of steering, prompting the commanding officer to order the ship’s speed from 10 knots to five knots.
    — Dan Lamothe, Washington Post, 1 Nov. 2017
  • The move, intended to make operating the ship more manageable, ended up taking away the helmsman’s ability to steer.
    — Eric Schmitt, Thomas Gibbons-Neff and Helene Cooper, New York Times, 1 Nov. 2017
  • Burling had the higher profile, becoming the youngest helmsman in the Cup’s 167-year history to win it.
    — Christopher Clarey, New York Times, 17 May 2018
  • The great helmsman recounted the youthful dissenters’ arrest and repeated the axe phraseology.
    — David B. Moore, Quartz Africa, 7 Sep. 2019
  • Russian women, for example, cannot be ship’s helmsmen (in order, apparently, to protect their reproductive health).
    — The Economist, 5 May 2018
  • Named after Baius, Ulysses’ helmsman, the town was situated in a volcanic park, and its waters became known for their medicinal properties.
    — Maria Mocerino, Interesting Engineering, 16 Aug. 2025
  • Ainslie, a reserve helmsman for Oracle at the start of the race, was brought on board as a tactician with Team New Zealand out to a dominant start.
    — Christopher Clarey, New York Times, 25 May 2017
  • The country had only 20 years earlier ended a brutal war with Japan, but the ship's helmsman was Japanese (Sulu).
    — John Blake, CNN, 1 May 2022
  • Peter Burling, the winning helmsman of the last two America’s Cups, and his team had a number of impressive starts and match-racing maneuvers during two days of racing.
    — Michael Verdon, Robb Report, 1 Aug. 2022
  • One of the pilots gave a series of unusually aggressive commands, shouting to the ship’s Indian helmsman to steer hard right, then hard left, according to a person familiar with audio recordings from the ship’s voyage data recorder.
    — BostonGlobe.com, 18 July 2021
  • The sailing organization also call its hydrofoiling boats the F50, in deference to F1, and has changed the name of the helmsman, in traditional yacht-racing parlance, to driver.
    — Michael Verdon, Robb Report, 8 Sep. 2022
  • The National Transportation Safety Board panel found that a rigid bridge hierarchy contributed to the disaster because officers and helmsmen were reluctant to contest his decision.
    — Author: Ian Simpson, Anchorage Daily News, 13 Dec. 2017
  • Perhaps most important, the team successfully navigated the contentious transition from the popular veteran helmsman Dean Barker to the 26-year-old Peter Burling.
    — Christopher Clarey, New York Times, 26 June 2017
  • During the 1960 Olympic Games in Rome, Sofia’s brother, the late King Constantine II of Greece, won a gold medal as helmsman of the boat Nereus in Gulf of Naples.
    — Stefania Conrieri, Vanity Fair, 5 Feb. 2026

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'helmsman.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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