Why Warspite's steering faults resist a simple diagnosis

What repeatedly troubled Warspite's steering gear?

No single simple cause explains it; armored, redundant battleship steering was a complicated system with many possible failure points.

A capital ship's steering gear had to survive damage, transmit large forces, and remain operable through redundant paths. Those requirements created a mechanically complicated installation rather than a single easily isolated component. The surviving evidence does not support one definitive failure mode. Reliability problems can emerge from a whole protected system.