FW: [Bell Historians] Clock = Klok = Bell

[Anne Willis]

Surprising it is that no one has yet mentioned a probably relevant 
bit of evidence: On ships, time is marked in "bells", which 
subdivide a four-hour watch into half-hour intervals. That usage 
must be very old.

CSZ


>From the merchant navy people of my family

Anne


It was, once on a time.  (Pun unintended.)  It’s not as simple as to say
that watches were four hours either, for example the old Dog watch was only
two hours long.  You always had to quote the watch name next to the watch,
eg “Three bells of the fore-noon watch.”  A sandglass, containing half an
hours of sand was sometimes used to mark the passing of the half hours and a
small bell chimed when the glass was turned.  Don’t forget, this was in the
days before a reliable chronometer had been made, and so keeping track of
time was a tricky thing.
In the MN we no longer have the bell system, no doubt because watches are a
fluid thing is the day and age and also because chronometer’s are reliable. 
Normally we have a central chronometer on the bridge, and all other clocks
are taken from that.  Often there are two, one marking GMT and one marking
ships time.
My last outfit was unusual in that we rang “noon bells” so we all knew when
lunch was!  It also allowed us to test the ship’s general alarm, take fuel
and distance logs and other useful things.
Don’t ask me about the RN, no doubt they still do, but then if they had
their way we would never have had the steam turbine.  Parson had to take the
engineering practical step of running his ship Turbinia, around the RN fleet
at top speed before the acknowledged that steam reciprocating engines might
not be as good as modern technology.  They also believe in all sorts of
other arcane and backward practices, but that’s tradition for you.
On an interesting side note, mariners have their own lingo and RN and MN do
have some overlap, but we also have plenty of different terms.  Stick us all
in a room together, and we would probably no more understand each other than
you would us!


Additionally, the 12 to 4 watch normally take their lunch early due to the
need to be on the bridge at 12 noon, so their lunch is normally at 1130,
which is still referred to as '7 bells'.
I do believe that the RN no longer observe the practice of ringing bells,
they do change eventually!