One analytical design problem involves constructing control laws for marine autopilot systems. Despite numerous known solutions, this problem can still be further developed by taking into account the actual conditions of the control system operation. An important issue for discussion is the feedback synthesis for marine ships with time delays in their rudders' actuators. In this work, a new approach is proposed for providing all the desirable dynamic features of a closed-loop system with autopilot while taking into account the presence of a time delay. This approach is based on the predictive compensation of time delays via the specific transformation of an initially given reference controller with a special multipurpose structure. The applicability and effectiveness of the proposed method is further illustrated by a practical example of a controller design.