I see these in movies, granted the movies aren’t all that accurate. But my question involves the big, brass thing the captain stands at, that looks like a bass drum in a marching band, with sectors and lettering on the sides and two handles, one on either side, pivoted in the center. What is this called? Does it just signal the people in the engine room to do this or that with the engines (“all engines ahead full,” “all engines stop,” etc.), or is it used by the captain to guide the ship directly? (In The Caine Mutiny, I saw both Capt. Queeg and Mister Maryk using this control; at one point Maryk pushed one handle forward and pulled the other one backward.)
Dougie,
what you saw is called an engine repeater, it acts as a signalling system to let the engineers know what speed to set the propellors turning. Newer ships don’t really have them, they have actual throttle controls where the person on the helm actually has direct control of the engines/propellors.
In older vessels, particularly steam driven ones, the engineering crew actually had direct control of the engines/propellors.
As for having two repeaters, in that instance the ship probably had two screws. In that particular instance, pushing one forward and one in reverse, the helmsman wanted the ship to turn very quickly.
Korzdan
It’s called the Engine order telegraph or EOT for short.
The Captain on the bridge would say to the officer of the deck…“Ahead full”…the ood would say “Helmsman…ahead full”…the helmsman would say “ahead full,aye” and place the lever to the ahead full position.This would cause the EOT in the Engine room spaces to change position the ahead full and ring a bell so the throttleman sees the order change.The throttleman would say “Bridge orders Ahead full” to the Engineering officer who would in turn say “Answer ahead full”. The throttleman would open the throttles to allow enough steam to pass to the turbine to make revolutions for ahead full.
In short./…moving that one little lever makes alot of stuff happen.
Thanks, guys…golly, Rich, are you in the Navy? 
Past tense,thank god! I WAS in the navy.I was the poor sap at the bottom of the food chain.I was the throttleman staring at the EOT waiting for it to move.