HELLS BELLS

 I'm back on Naval things.  You may have heard in the movies someone say a phrase like, "Six bells and all is well."  It's something you would hear on a ship - well, maybe many years ago.  If you thought that "six bells" meant "six o'clock" you were wrong.  Here's the whole story.

On board ship, it is important to always have someone on watch for other ships, storms, land and certain  anomalies.  A person can't be out there on the watch too long, so they broke the day up into six different "watches". These watches are from Midnight to 4 am, 4 to 8 am, 8 to noon, noon to 4 pm, 4 to 8 pm and 8 to midnight.  (Note that I gave you the times using the landlubber clock as opposed to the 24-hour clock that the Navy and all military uses.)

Now, to make sure that the person on watch is awake and alert, he has to ring a bell every half hour.  A ring of the bell marks one-half hour into his watch.  If he were on the 4 to 8 pm watch, the bell would be rung at 4:30 for one bell.  Now the bell would be rung again at 5 and called two bells, three bells at 5:30 and four bells at 6 pm, etc.  You see, there are eight bells in a watch.  Eight bells marks the change of watchman.  

So the next time you hear, "six bells and all is well," understand that you have to know which watch is on.  Six bells on the 4 to 8 watch means it is 7 o-clock.  Got it?