3 bells and all's well

[zingo1327]

before clocks how did sailors know the time to be able to shout out throughout the night, 1bell and all's well, 2 bells etc etc

[shaneystar2]

They used an hourglass
http://www.ehow.com/f...ringing-protocol.html

[jno]

if the hourglass didn't work they could count: one elephant, two elephant...

[Mosaic]

In fact a lot of the time they would be simply guessing. The real purpose of the watchman calling out was to provide reassurance rather than any precise notion of the hour - they would like any human be losing concentration, not noticing when hourglasses ran out etc. In the early pre-railway days of the industrial revolution, when more precise timekeeping became desired, visual and auditory prompts were still relied on rather than seeing the dial of a clock - many clocks in mills or farm estates chimed, but did not have (expensive) faces with figures on them - other mechanisms included a chime combined with a ball on a flagpole, that climbed the pole gradually to midday then dropped.
The railways changed everything because they needed precise universal time to avoid terrible high-speed accidents.

[derekpara]

Sailors didn't call our 'All's well' That was done by the street watchmen in towns and cities.

Ships' bells were chimed according to the the six four hour watches in a day, the Middle Watch (Midnight - 4am) Morning Watch (4am-8am) Forenoon Watch (8am-12 noon) Afternoon Watch ( 12 noon-4pm) Dog Watches ( 4-6, 6-8pm) the First Watch, (8pm-Midnight).

1-bell indicated the first half hour of the watch, ie 12.30am, 2 bells = 1am, 3 bells = 1.30am and so on to eight bells signifying the end of the Watch.

Calculations were done at sea by the sun and then by timepieces of one sort or another.

[derekpara]

On reflection, Zingo, mariners DID used to call out ' And all's well ' after sounding the watch bell, and that would have been in the days of hour glasses and wooden ships. My mistake.

D