Ship rudder control, so-called autopilot, includes a multiplicity of components connected with a bus interface to a CAN bus and via this also to each other. A further bus interface on each component of the control system is coupled to a separate, second bus, with the components being provided with unambiguous addresses and further information being assigned that mark the components as monitorable or non-monitorable. A device for emitting telegrams of component addresses and monitorability. A first comparator on all monitorable components start or switch off their own property as a monitoring component using the addresses of other components in received telegrams by comparison, and a second comparator on all monitorable components that use the number of received telegrams by comparison with the number of telegrams received on the other channel causing a change of the channel to that with the higher number of received telegrams under certain circumstances.