From earliest times, sea voyagers must have had some sort of system for look-outs, to spot any trouble, danger, change in weather, landfall, and in the british Royal Navy there were ‘watches’ set where the crew would take it in turn to ‘watch’. It would depend on the number of men in a crew how many watches would be set with a watch keeping officer in charge. Bells would be sounded so that the crew would know what time it was – before there were proper clocks, that would work on board ship, and hundreds of years before most seamen would have their own wristwatch.
The 24 hours were divided up into 5 four-hour watches and 2 two-hour watches, the dog watches. The reason for this was to make sure that the same crew members weren’t always on duty at the same time.
There were names for the different watches so there would be no confusion, and they had set times. Bells would be rung to signal the time, and they would be rung for each half hour, increasing the number of rings, so by the end of a watch it would be eight bells. There would only be four bells rung for the shorter dog watch.
- the Afternoon Watch was from noon to 16:00
- the First Dog Watch (2 hours) was from 16:00 to 18:00
- The Last Dog Watch (2 hours) was from 18:00 to 20:00
- The First Watch was from 20:00 to midnight
- The Middle Watch was from midnight to 04:00
- The Morning Watch was from 04:00 to 08:00
- The Forenoon Watch was from 08:00 to noon
No-one can say for sure where the term dog watch came from… maybe it was the time dogs went to sleep, maybe it was after the Dog Star, maybe it was a corruption of dodge watch, or maybe it is from Dutch and German words… Maybe it is just a term which has arisen from who knows where!
Lois Elsden 