NavList:

   

Reply

In the US Navy, ships maintain local time. Deck logs and all other
navigation logs are kept in local time. Any communications leaving the
ship use GMT.

-----Original Message-----
From: Navigation Mailing List
[mailto:NAVIGATION-L@LISTSERV.WEBKAHUNA.COM] On Behalf Of Trevor J.
Kenchington
Sent: Tuesday, December 09, 2003 12:16
To: NAVIGATION-L@LISTSERV.WEBKAHUNA.COM
Subject: Re: Master & Commander


Interesting. My understanding (which may be faulty) is that the Royal
Navy's practice, through the two World Wars, was to maintain ship's time
on GMT, at least throughout the Atlantic and Mediterranean. (They may
have done something different in the Pacific theatre.) I can understand
that other navies would prefer to use zone time. However, in an era of
long-distance radio communication, wasn't it difficult if each ship used
its own time based on its LAN?

Navigation must use GMT, of course. Presumably logs of radio
communications use that or some other zone time (perhaps that of the
Admiral's headquarters). Orders from ship to ship could be similarly
timed. Still, it sounds a bit awkward to have everyone's wrist watches
set to a ship's time which differs from the time being used between
ships. (Naturally, such considerations did not apply to merchant ships
individually plying their trades in the era before general radio
communications.)


Trevor Kenchington




--
Trevor J. Kenchington PhD                         Gadus@iStar.ca
Gadus Associates,                                 Office(902) 889-9250
R.R.#1, Musquodoboit Harbour,                     Fax   (902) 889-9251
Nova Scotia  B0J 2L0, CANADA                      Home  (902) 889-3555

                     Science Serving the Fisheries
                      http://home.istar.ca/~gadus

   

Reply