A WWII bronze steering wheel & column with a Sperry Gyro-compass, from the USS Vixen flagship gunboat of the Commanders of the Atlantic Fleet.

Numbered: S 8638.

Height: 130 cm.

Diameter of wheel: 69 cm.

USS Vixen (PG-53) was a gunboat of the United States Navy during World War II, in which it served as a flagship to the Commanders of the Atlantic Fleet.

Built as the Orion by Krupp Germaniawerft at Kiel, Germany in 1929, the steel-hulled yacht was purchased from German-American woollen manufacturer Julius Forstmann on 13 November 1940. Converted to a gunboat at Brooklyn, New York, by the Sullivan Drydock and Repair Corporation, the erstwhile pleasure craft was renamed Vixen and designated PG-53. Commissioned at her conversion yard on 25 February she got underway for the Caribbean on 5 March 1941.

In commercial service, 1947–2004 Vixen reverted to her original name, Orion, and operated as a cruise ship in the Panama region.

In 1965 she was saved from the scrap yard by Epirotiki Lines of Greece. She was taken to Pireus in Greece where she was rebuilt from the hull upwards and turned into the Argonaut, a luxury cruise ship under charter to Raymond Whitcombe, touring, amongst others, places such as the Mediterranean, Caribbean, and the Fjords of Norway. In 1995 she was sold to Memnon Tours of Cairo, Egypt, and renamed Regina Maris, operating a seven-night cruise in the Red Sea, and later in 2001, the Mediterranean, under charter to Phoenix Reisen of Germany.

She was laid up in Alexandria, Egypt, from late 2001 until 2004 when she was sold and taken to Greece to be used as a floating hotel during the Athens 2004 Summer Olympics. She was sold for scrap once the Games were over,  and taken to Turkey where she was broken up in 2005.