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I've realized that I have taken a liberty with what people know of the ships bell system of telling time. So I'm going to post this for those of you interested in seeing what time I'm really referring to in my story.
I'm hoping that it transfers well and is understandable.
the system I'm using is the Classical
*British usage after the Nore mutiny[1]
At midnight on New Year's Eve sixteen bells would be struck - eight bells for the old year and eight bells for the new.
Most of the crew of a ship would be divided up into between two and four groups called watches. Each watch would take its turn with the essential activities of manning the helm, navigating, trimming sails, and keeping a lookout.
The hours between 16:00 and 20:00 are so arranged because that watch (the "dog watch") was divided into two. The odd number of watches aimed to give each man a different watch each day. It also allows the entire crew of a vessel to eat an evening meal, the normal time being at 1700 with First Dog watchmen eating at 1800.
Alrighty then that is the best I can do ~ I haven't figured out how to create tables in html code yet
I hope that you'll be able to read it and make sense of it
hugs to you and yours
Danielle
Comments
Hells Bells
Nothing like crawling into a snug birth on board and the ship's clock hits 12:00 just as you doze off.
!8" inches
I think (I'm relying on .,M.Forester here) that that 'snug birth' was eighteen inches of hammock for almost everyone on board: and yes, some one would be in the eighteen inches on either side. Of course officers, even warrant officers and midshipmen had it better, but I've been on a few old ships, and even officers were stuffed in together. Four on, four off (hours, or eightbells) is also something most of us have never had to deal with. I want a nap just thinking 'bout it.
yes 18"
Yes 18 inches of space to sleep in and stow your gear, not only that but think of the smell that permeated the ship because of the lack of hygiene, phew it had to be about enough to gag a maggot.
And then there was the food, if you could call it that, Salted pork and beef that had to be pounded to become soft then boiled and served.
Hardtack and Sea biscuits were another unpleasant item made of flour or rice and stored in barrels for long periods, they were indeed teeth breakers.
But to wash it all down brackish water or Rum stored for long periods in barrels, or a mixed combination of both, perhaps just to keep the men half drunk to be able to eat the food.
It was indeed a time of Wooden ships and Iron men!
Danielle_O
"Life is pain, Princess ~ anyone telling you different is trying to sell you something."
Danielle_O
"Life is pain, Princess ~ anyone telling you different is trying to sell you something."
At least in the '80s...
At least in the 1980s, you still heard the bells rung in the US Navy - and I assume to this day - aboard ship.
It's also important to note that just because the bells rang - your watch might not be over (your relief has to get there first).
A particularly brutal punishment (that doesn't sound like it to outsiders) required someone to report to the officer of the deck, in the uniform of the day, at the beginning of every watch - all day long... This could go for several days - but not commonly. It was something assigned to young officers who'd transgressed but couldn't be physically punished (caning, etc.) like the sailors.
For more reasons than you might think - they were called the days of "Wooden Ships and Iron Men".
Food for thought,
Anne
Oh I just love it ...
When people talk about how to keep the ship all TIED UP and ship shape. It is so nice to be with someone who knows the ROPES.
giggle
Khadijah
Difference
Ah but then there is the difference between Ropes and Lines !
Lines are 1/2 inch and below in diameter. Ropes are anything bigger. And then there are cables, which are more than three ropes braided together to tow a sister ship or secure a hulk (demasted ship).
Sorry, I got carried away there.
Danielle_O
"Life is pain, Princess ~ anyone telling you different is trying to sell you something."
Danielle_O
"Life is pain, Princess ~ anyone telling you different is trying to sell you something."
And then...
There's also cord and cables.
So... every thirty minutes
at sea, an angel gets his wings?
Michelle
Perhaps the Flying Dutchman
Perhaps the Flying Dutchman considered the --- Hells Bells?
CaroL
CaroL
Ships Bells
Because of the width of this table, you may need to decrease your font display size and/or stretch your browser display window in order to see the entire table without "folding," which makes it look ugly, or scrolling, which is annoying.
Watch
Watch
Watch
Watch
Dog Watch
Dog Watch
Watch
by ringing in the pattern: One Bell, Two Bells, Three Bells, Eight Bells
instead of the traditional cadence: Five Bells, Six Bells, Seven Bells, Eight Bells
because the signal for the start of the mutiny was Five Bells of the Last Dog Watch.
This new tradition/superstition is continued in the UK Navy.
-
Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
Ok smarty pants
How did you create that Table?
I cannot seem to find the correct way of doing it, the commands elude me!
That's why I finally had to post a screen shot of mine.
Seriously though that is exactly the effect and display I was going for, and you seem to have gotten it right off.
Congrats and thank you!
Danielle_O
"Life is pain, Princess ~ anyone telling you different is trying to sell you something."
Danielle_O
"Life is pain, Princess ~ anyone telling you different is trying to sell you something."
Your browser will allow...
...you to view the source for this page. There will be a lot of housekeeping "junk" wrapped around the code itself, but it will all be perfectly visible, and you can copy it. You can do this to discover how *any* technique that you admire was done.
Note that I made many compromises, because the recommended way to format tables is through using Cascading Stylesheets (CSS) and BC doesn't allow this. Also, it doesn't seem to handle the "table header" information correctly, and I wasn't in the mood to debug it, so I just "fudged" it so it would look fairly nice without a lot of tedious fiddling around to discover what was happening. As a final exam in web coding, one would barely receive a passing grade.
I didn't use borders to make little neat boxes because I hate them. I used the "diamonds" symbol used on decks of cards to represent the bell strikes, because it's fairly widely supported in many browsers.
As for how I did it, this sort of thing was for many years my trade and metier, as Heinrich Heine said about God.
Cheers,
Puddin'
Dieu me pardonnera. C'est son métier.
God will forgive me. It's his trade.
--- Heinrich Heine
-
Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
YOU
are the MAN.
I must have tried a dozen times to get it set in the HTML code and never thought of looking at someone else's source code to find the correct commands. That is great and I thank you for doing it- you must have been really bored to even take the task on.
And the last bit about the Nore Mutiny is absolutely correct, I just didn't want to put it in to further confuse anyone anymore than I had to. (If readers were that interested they could look easily on wikipedia or google it for that matter.)
Hope that you don't mind but I saved your 'code' for further reference, to help me learn how to do that in the future God I'm learning alot of coding these days, I've been in the hardware side of things for too long !
One last note: Heinrich Heine had it right!
Love and Hugs to you and yours,
Danielle_O
"Life is pain, Princess ~ anyone telling you different is trying to sell you something."
Danielle_O
"Life is pain, Princess ~ anyone telling you different is trying to sell you something."
Nore mutiny
The UK asterisk notation makes very little sense unless you say why they did it. The wikipedia article isn't terribly clear. I should have corrected it. Maybe I will one of these days.
I don't mind, as you could have done the same thing on Wikipedia. Didn't take that long, as all I did was count up the columns, fill out a line of cells, duplicate the line to make the columns, then fill it with data.
There are some who say that he was being sarcastic.
Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
-
Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style