Caronia's Clocks
With any ship that travels around the globe, one of the most common practices is changing the time on board to suit the time-zone being entered. On the regular transatlantic crossings of the “Green Goddess”, clocks would need to be advanced or retarded either 4 or 5 hours, often in as many days.
It appears that each Captain had his own way of doing this. Early on in Caronia's career, the method used was to advance or retard the clocks in 20 minute intervals at 2am, 10am and 5pm each day. This would happen on the 2nd to 6th nights out. For both the crew and the passengers this method for 5 days out 7, must have seemed quite confusing.
When the time difference between Southampton and New York was only 4 hours, a simpler system was used. For the 1st night out, clocks would be advanced or retarded by 1 hour at midnight, and on the remaining 6 nights they would be adjusted by 30 minutes, again at midnight. This system meant that the clocks would be adjusted on every night of the voyage.
[Photo: © Peter Stevens 2006]
When the time difference was 5 hours, clocks would be advanced or retarded by 1 hour at midnight, usually on the 2nd to 6th night out. Westbound crossings, when clocks were retarded each night, were the easiest to cope with.
Mercer clock control box [Photo: Mercer History of Chronometers]
Clock Control Mechanism
The master control box for the ship's clocks was housed in the chartroom near the bridge.
It probably resembled the one seen above, controlled by an electrically driven chronometer. This in turn would drive several relay stations placed around the ship at probably 12 volts or higher. Each relay in turn driving maybe 6 to 10 clocks locally. The local voltage to the clocks being just 2.5 volts.
It's interesting to note on this example that the clock on the door face was itself a slave clock driven by the standard Mercer silent drive, however with a round dial as opposed to the square ones used in the staterooms. Across the entire ship there were 570 slave mechanisms.
Thomas Mercer clock from
the 1st Class Smoking Room
[Photo: © Lucy Dunn 2000]
Days Gained and Lost
Most of Caronia's major cruises involved Eastbound traversals of the Atlantic, and on Great World Cruises the Indian and Pacific Oceans too.
On occasions when the International Date Line was crossed, the “Green Goddess” had gained a day. It meant that this extra day on board had to be, as it were, relived twice.
On those occasions when Caronia crossed the International Date Line westbound, a day had to be lost. Because this was a very rare event, the print shop on board would celebrate this by issuing spoof daily programmes. The contents would clearly amuse the passengers, listing the spurious events that they had “missed.”
