Seamen did the never-ending work of setting, trimming and taking in sail, and of maintaining the thousands of interrelated parts of the wind ship's complex machinery. Often, however, the crew's main task was, literally, to watch- to make constant observation of sails and how they were set, of the lead and wear on line and gear, if sea and sky for signs of of how the inevitable coming change of wind and waves might actually unfold. Patient watchfulness and abundance of time are the stuff of normal life at sea. That's why thinking about things came naturally to seamen under sail- an unavoidable introspection. “Meditation and water are wedded forever” said Melville's Ishmael
The seaman's interest in fine time divisions is evident in the breakdown of watches into smaller intervals. In an age where few people carried timepieces, the rhythm of life and work was based on the solar day or the gross intervals of the mine or factory: start, meal break, finish. No one needed to know more than that. Unlike other workers of the 1880's, however, sailors aboard ship lived in half-hour parcels of time, rung out by the ship's bell. In the afternoon watch, from noon to four, for example, one bell meant 12:30, two bell 1:00, three bells 1:30 and so on, until eight bells signalling four o'clock, and the end of that watch and the start of the next, when the bell sequence would start over again. (During the two-hour-long dogwatches four bells ended the first dogwatch and began the second.) The times of meals, the lookout's watch, the helmsman's trick – all were determined by the bell striking each half-hour section of the two- or four-hour watches.
Seamen did the never-ending work of setting, trimming and taking in sail, and of maintaining the thousands of interrelated parts of the wind ship's complex machinery. Often, however, the crew's main task was, literally, to watch- to make constant observation of sails and how they were set, of the lead and wear on line and gear, if sea and sky for signs of of how the inevitable coming change of wind and waves might actually unfold. Patient watchfulness and abundance of time are the stuff of normal life at sea. That's why thinking about things came naturally to seamen under sail- an unavoidable introspection. “Meditation and water are wedded forever” said Melville's Ishmael
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