Episode: 4048
Title: HPR4048: Today I learnt: Ship’s Bells
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr4048/hpr4048.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-25 19:00:16

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This is Hacker Public Radio episode 4,048 for Wednesday the 7th of February 2024.
Today's show is entitled, Today I Learned Ship's Bells.
It is part of the series today I Learned.
It is hosted by Trey and is about seven minutes long.
It carries a clean flag.
The summary is, a brief history and description of ship's bells for time keeping.
Ahoi there my tease!
Eight bells and all as well!
All right, enough of me poorly impersonating a pirate.
As you may or may not know, based on comments in one or more of my previous episodes,
I dabble a bit in clock repair.
Specifically, mechanical clocks, powered by springs or gravity.
My grandfather was a clockmaker, and I remember sitting as still and quietly as I could in his shop watching him work.
I was fascinated, but I could not ask any questions, make any noise or touch anything at risk of being told to leave.
So I learned very little.
But it did plant a seed deep inside me, which would flourish many years after my grandfather passed away.
I plan to do a series about mechanical clocks and some of my experiences with clock repair in upcoming months.
This has been simmering on the back burner for a while, as I debated if it would really be of interest to hackers.
My mind creates stories of listeners shouting, oh for crying out loud, first six episodes about plumbing and now clocks, get on to something interesting.
However, I am pressing on.
If you like this episode, and want more in this series, please leave a comment.
If you would prefer other types of content on HPR, then skip the rest of this episode, record one more suited to your desires, or detailing what you would like to hear and why.
Also, you will probably hear ticking and maybe striking of various different clocks in the background of this recording.
My new home office space is also the home for close to a dozen clocks in various states of disrepair.
It is challenging to remove their sounds from the recording, and given the subject matter of this series, I am not even going to try to remove them.
Back to the topic.
A couple of years ago, I purchased a very inexpensive box of assorted clocks and clock parts from a local seller.
These were in various states of disrepair.
One item in the advertisement for this box immediately caught my eye.
It was a brass, ergo's brand, ship's bell clock.
This timepiece was literally dripping with oil, but seemed to be intact, and I started working on it.
In a later podcast, I will describe my approach to items like this, and what is involved in initially cleaning and evaluating them.
Due to life challenges, it took me over a year to get this clock reassembled and working.
With this clock, I learned that ship's bells do not strike a normal hour count like traditional striking clocks.
Instead, their strike directly relates to the time of an historic ship's watch schedule.
According to the ship's bell, an article from Naval History and Heritage Command whose link is in the show notes.
Early shipboard timekeeping was done through the use of a half hour glass.
The job for one of the ship's boys was to watch the glass, and turn it over when it ran out, then strike the ship's bell so that all aboard would be aware of the time every half hour.
On sea vessels, various persons on duty keep watch at or around their station.
These include the lookout, who was constantly watching all around the ship to ensure there was no danger, and to alert of any signs of land or other vessels.
The ship's bell had many other uses beyond timekeeping, and those are described in detail in the previously mentioned Naval History article.
With all this bell ringing, patterns were developed.
For timekeeping, this basically broke to a specific pattern of incrementing strikes every half hour, throughout the ship's watch.
Each watch is a four hour long shift.
The first five of which are broken down as follows.
First watch from eight pm to midnight.
Middle watch from midnight to four am.
Morning watch from four am to eight am.
Morning watch from eight am to noon.
And afternoon watch from noon to four pm.
The remaining four hours are broken up into two dog watches.
But those are outside the scope of this discussion.
You can learn more about these details in Tim Burton's article entitled Ship's Bell Time, and found at the link in the show notes.
Ship's bell strikes increment every half hour.
At the beginning slash end of a four hour watch it's the same time.
The bell strikes eight times in groups of two strikes with a tiny pause in between.
Here is an example from my now working ship's bell clock.
One half hour into the watch the ship's bell will sound a single strike.
One hour into the watch the ship's bell will sound two strikes.
And hour and a half into the watch the ship's bell will sound three strikes in the following pattern.
Ding ding pause ding.
Kind of like you may have just heard while I was recording earlier.
At the two hour mark there will be four strikes following that same pattern.
Ding ding the pause ding ding et cetera.
I will not list all of these but you get the idea.
Because the strikes are paired in groups of two and even number of strikes denotes the top of the hour.
And it is easy to count the number of pairs.
One pair two pair three pair four pair.
If the bell ends in a single strike or an odd number of strikes total you know it is at the bottom of the hour.
It seems strange at first but it can easily be learned in a short amount of time.
And now the phrase I used at the beginning of this podcast eight bells and alls well should make sense.
Eight bells indicates the end of the watch.
And an individual on watch duty is stating that their shift is finished and there was nothing to report.
I hope that you've enjoyed this episode.
Your feedback is encouraged through comments and especially by recording your own HPR episode.
Have an awesome day.
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On this otherwise stated, today's show is released under Creative Commons.
Attribution 4.0 International License.
