Trim Tabs in Shanghai

When I opened the curtains after checking into the hotel room, I realised that we are bang on the east bank of Huang Pu river. The lights from the skyscrapers were reflecting brightly on the flowing waters. Boats, barges and cruises of varying sizes were gambolling across the length of the river, with the brightness of their lights geometrically proportional to their size. Went to bed with a smile, promising to check out the life on the river in daylight.

 The next day, almost two hours went by in simply watching the happenings on the river. There is something pristinely calming about a river, and the unhurried ways of a large boat. That is when I noticed the small appendices attached to the back of the hull of every barge. The bigger ones had two of them on the two extremes of the width of the boat, and the smaller ones had only one.

 Engineers will tell you that these suspended plates are called Trim Tabs. They are on every sea faring vehicle. The larger ships, speed boats and passenger cruises have them hidden below the water level. To see the Trim Tabs operating, you need to watch a barge or a small to medium-sized cargo boat that roam the river naked, without a fancy deck.

Trim Tabs come into play when the ships need to turn or change direction. When engaged, they stay steady and rock-solid to help the boat do the turn. The tabs turn left and provide the leverage for even a large oil tanker to make that smooth right turn, with minimal human effort. And vice versa.

 The aircrafts have a more complicated version of these tabs attached to the ailerons as flaps on the tail section. The use of Trim Tabs is a major contributor to the reduction of the pilots’ workload during climbing or descent. They play this and other roles in the safety of a fighter aircrafts.

For the enormously important work they do, Trim Tabs are remarkably small in size, especially in proportion to the size of the oil tanker or a wide-bodied jumbo jet. A Trim Tab of just 2-3 meters height is not uncommon for even a tanker that is over 200 meters long. Having read about this marvellous piece of engineering that helps cut “trim”, one is left fascinated by these small things punching far above their weight.

Buckminster Fuller says: “Something hit me very hard once, thinking about what one little man could do. Think of the Queen Mary—the whole ship goes by and then comes the rudder. And there's a tiny thing at the edge of the rudder called a trim tab.

“It's a miniature rudder. Just moving the little trim tab builds a low pressure that pulls the rudder around. Takes almost no effort at all.”

 Fuller, an engineer himself, often used Trim Tabs as a metaphor for leadership and the power of the individual. This small appendage, the Trim Tab seems to say, “Believe in something, stay true to that belief, stay steadfast, and the whole ship, whether a barge or an oil tanker, will eventually turn around.” That is the sheer power of dissidence, the lone voice of doubt or protest.

 Fuller lived as a Trim Tab: “So I said that the little individual can be a Trim Tab.. ... But if you're doing dynamic things mentally, the fact is that you can just put your foot out like that and the whole big ship of state is going to go."

It is so easy to get overwhelmed by the size of the institution, the history of a problem, the daunting complications in a situation, authority, hierarchy and haloed precincts. Maybe when one feels small, we should recall a Trim Tab.

Buckminster Fuller lives on as a Trim Tab. The official newsletter of the Buckminster Fuller Institute is called "Trimtab". The epitaph on his tombstone reads, “Call Me Trim Tab”.