As the era of the UT 704 drew to a close, a few Ulstein designed anchor-handlers retained its DNA. Back in 1983 Star Offshore had the Ulstein design house produce was was billed as a UT 704 MkIII, the Star Polaris and then went on to order a couple of UT 734s. It so happened that in 1983 (a bit of a personal story here) I was master of the Star Polaris and the owners asked the Chief Engineer and I to come up with a new layout for the bridge. So we got to work and measured up all the buttons, switches and dials with which the ship was equipped and drew up an alternative layout, using less of the available space. As an aside I also proposed modifications to the joystick, suggesting that we needed an X/Y axis readout and a Low Gain facility to reduce the sensitivity when going ahead and astern. And for good measure I proposed that the driver should be able to choose the point of rotation, just as we were used to doing when on the sticks. The Chief and I had, by the time we had finished all the measuring and drawing, spent quite a bit of time on the bridge, which was provided with two well upholstered seats facing aft for the driver and the engineer, and one at the forward end for the watchkeeper.  And we noticed that from the watchkeeper’s seat it was only possible to see directly forward, since looking to port and starboard offered views of the pillars between the bridge windows. I remembered that the traditional American tugs overcame this problem by having a semi-circular shaped wheelhouse and so I drew a triangular bridge front on our plan and sent it to the owners. When the UT 734s Star Sirius and Star Spica entered service in 1985 they were equipped with the modified joystick, and were wonderful ships with two nine cylinder Wartsila diesels producing 9000 bhp, and twin work drums offering a massive wire storage capacity (for those days), however the owners balked at the idea of the triangular bridge front. Soon after appearing in Aberdeen they were hired by Shell and were their anchor-handlers of choice for many years. But Ulsteins have never been slow to take up what seems like good ideas, and so when the Northern Frontier, a further UT 734 entered service in 1987, there was the triangular bridge front (Photo of the ship as the Pacific Frontier, from Shipspotting). Ever afterwards I have thought that this radical change to bridge design, which became more or less standard in the years which followed, was my idea, but it turns out that I was wrong, and on compiling these narratives I find that the first offshore designs to be so provided were the Ikaluk and the Miscaroo out in Canada.  So well done Robert Allen.