NavList:

David C, you wrote:
"Regarding the time a ball was dropped I found this in the 1929 NZ Nautical Almanac:
'The time ball is dropped [at Lyttelton] at 3 30 pm New Zealand Standard time on Tuesdays and Fridays. (Reported unreliable, 1927).' 

100 years later it is unlikely we will ever know the reason for the time and days - unless there is a comment in a newspaper that provides a clue."

You had several posts with intriguing examples, and I think you've hit upon something interesting (which I also found, after your posts, digging around in old coast pilot resources). Maybe we have been asking the wrong question? The idea that a time ball would be dropped at 1pm local mean time has become a standard statement in brief historical accounts of time balls, but in reality it seems that the time varied from one port to the next with no particular preference. I suspect that the fame of the Greenwich time ball has led people to assume that others followed its rules, and it's still possible that there was some moderate preference for 1300. But maybe it's not a significant feature of the system at all. Pick a time. Publish it. Those who need to know will find it in their guidebooks. :)

Frank Reed