RINGING BELLS AT SEA

The festive season is never easy for a sailing writer, as the majority of interesting topics do not easily allow for being given a Christmas makeover. But be it ringing in the New Year, or decorations on an Xmas card, bells are very much a part of the seasonal celebrations.

Timekeeping for the watches aboard quickly became a crucial aspect of life afloat, with the ship’s bell being at the heart of naval routine. Image: Igor Sokolov / Shutterstock

As well as festive bells, the bells will be ringing out across the water, for as we look back in time, there is one part of a ship that has survived from the days of the late Middle Ages, right through to the very latest high technology ships of today, with almost nothing in the way of a change.

In our modern digital age it may seem something of an anachronism that modern vessels still have to have a ‘Ship’s Bell’, but there is now so much history and tradition linked to bells afloat that it is all but unthinkable that this centuries old link would be broken.

The history of bells is a fascinating topic that stretches back more than 5,000 years to a Neolithic culture in Northern China, whose pottery clapper bells are accepted as being the oldest known examples. Advances in technology were already driving developments and just a 1,000 years later the first metal bells started appearing across Asia.

The ancient Greeks were known to use bells, but it was the Romans who started the practice of announcing a particular time with the ringing of a bell, such as when the people were being called for the hour of bathing.

With the rise of Christianity across Europe, bells, who some thought represented the voice of God, quickly became associated with the summons to prayer, a factor that Pink Floyd described perfectly in their song ‘Time’:

‘Far away across the field,

The tolling of the iron bell,

Call the faithful to their knees’

Even in the calm of a foggy day, the bell buoy will still ring out its warning to approaching sailors. Image: Dan Hanscom / Shutterstock

On watch Time keeping, though, was still a very basic function, mainly driven by sunrise, midday and sunset. This might have been okay ashore, but out at sea, the growing complexity of ships, that were regularly making ever longer voyages, meant that a new level of organisation was needed.

Crews needed to be divided into different squads that could keep the boat sailing across the 24-hour period, and in time the watch system was developed, where those sailors not on duty could be resting.

This required a better system of time keeping though, which would be driven by a 30-minute hourglass, where the sand ran from one globe to another (a giant egg timer!). The youngest boy sailors aboard had the task of manning the hourglass, and at the conclusion of each half hour they would ring a bell, starting with one ring, or ‘bell’, at the first half hour and ending with eight rings/ bells at the end of a normal four hour period of duty or ‘watch’.

The practice of ringing eight bells at the end of a watch gave rise to the notion that when a sailor had died, his ‘eight bells’ had been rung, an expression that continues through to today.

If the four hour watches were to continue through the day, those who had the late night watches would always be on duty then, so in the late afternoon and early evening two short, two hour ‘Dog Watches’ were introduced. This ensured that as the days rolled on, everyone did all of the seven watch periods equally.

Bell traditions As the notion of the King’s Navy became more organised into the Royal Navy, a new wealth of tradition would arise, whereby the name of the ship was inscribed on the face of the bell, and even if the name of the ship changed, which could often happen when ships were taken as prizes, the name on the bell would stay the same.

Another tradition was that it was one of the roles of the cook to maintain the bell and keep it clean. One had to hope that he did a good job as another tradition was that if a member of the ship’s crew had a child to be baptized, then this would be done on board, with the bell inverted and filled with water and used as the font. The name of the child was then inscribed on the inside of the bell, before the blessed water was tipped over the side to mingle with the sea.

The oldest recorded instance of a ship’s bell takes us back to the early 1400s and the building of the Grace Dieu, Henry V’s flagship and one of the largest and most advanced ships of the time. Sadly, the Grace Dieu did not have a happy time in commission with the Navy and ended up sinking in the upper reaches of the Hamble River after being struck by lightning, with her bell either being lost or recovered and then lost.

What is more certain is that a bell recovered from the wreck of a Portuguese warship in the Arabian Sea has been dated to 1498, and since then the collection of ships’ bells gives us a wonderful timeline of nautical development.

In 1546, even after the King’s ships had become known as the Royal Navy, the traditions of before would be further entrenched, though there was a later change to the ringing of the bell on British warships following the Nore mutiny in 1797. On 12 May that year, the ringing of five bells in the first dog watch had been the signal for mutineers to seize their ships, so the Navy ensured that this signal would never be repeated. After the fourth bell, for this one watch only, at 1830, the bell is only rung once.

Bell buoys There was one other primary function of the ship’s bell, in that when rung, it gave a sound signal that would carry well across the water, so in foggy conditions the ship’s bell was rung, much in the way of a foghorn, to alert other ships of their presence. It was found that the sharp, clear tones carried well across the water, which were a further assistance to sailors as the system of buoyage was developed around our coasts (watch out for an upcoming Dougal’s Dairy special on buoyage).

In dangerous areas, it made a great deal of sense to hang a large bell on the top of a buoy, as even a slight ripple on the water would make the buoy rock, which caused the bell to sound out a warning. By the 1800s ‘bell buoys’ had appeared around our coast, with the early versions just having a clapper, similar to a church bell, whilst later versions employed a heavy metal ball in a tube that would roll across and strike the bell.

However, as anyone who has been afloat in poor visibility knows all too well, sound can be very deceiving, both in terms of direction and distance. This brought about one further development, with underwater bells appearing in the early 1900s. Not only does the sound travel further through water than through air, but an early ‘high-tech’ navigation aid was a simple hydrophone which could detect an underwater bell from up to 10 miles away.

Keeping to the underwater theme, it may come as something of a surprise that even the cramped and enclosed confines of our nuclear submarines come complete with a ship’s bell, though today this will be rung purely for ceremonial purposes. We may not know where they are when at sea, but wherever they are, as 2021 becomes 2022, we can be certain that the new year will be welcomed in by the ring of ships’ bells.

I do not have a bell to ring, but to all the readers of Dougal’s Diary, can I instead wish you all the very best Season’s Greetings.