Can’t get boat into neutral

I recently acquired my first boat. It is a 1989 star line, and it has what I believe to be a 1972 evinrude 55 outboard on it. Took it to the lake yesterday and everything was going good until I realized I couldn’t get it out of Forward, i could push the neutral and reverse buttons, but the prop keeps spinning forward.

after cruising around for a little bit I tested out the buttons again. And I was able to shift it back and forth a few times, however eventually it got stuck in forward again, which is the way I ended up putting it on the trailer like that.

Today, I cannot get the engine to start, I presume because I cannot get the engine into neutral. I had read a few posts, and I believe they refer to this shifter as a hydra electric shifter. It seemed like one solution was to wire in a toggle switch, does anyone else have any suggestions?

Motor has to be turning to get oil pressure to shift it.------Motor has to have ---TYPE-C ----gear oil marked for electric shift.-----Check lower unit for water in the gear oil.

i do believe the shifting problem was indeed the incorrect fluid, i drained the fluid out and it was black and milky. I added the type C, and saw that it was green, so im assuming that the previous owner put the wrong stuff in there, unless theres a type C that would be black. Anyway i was concerned about the milky oil anyway, so i went ahead and drain the new oil after a couple trips, and yes it was milky as well. so i went ahead and bought some new fluid, as well as a pack of those rubber washers. I inspected the old washers and one of them had a fair amount of metal shavings embedded into it, so hopefully thats where the water was coming in. Going to take the boat out a couple more times, and check the oil again. I'll hope for the best.

As for the starting issue, quite simply my battery was drained.

Thanks.