Playing with mechanical deck watches

Most accurate time piece I have owned is one of these. Purchased on Ebay from a ship salvage guy in India 8 years ago. Arrived well packed in bubble wrap. I bought it for sight-timing and keep a log of the error. I found it only varies (gains) about 0.5 to 1sec. per month, checked always against gps time.
Tamaya chronometer.jpg
The Tamaya became the chronometer of choice on merchant ships in my latter days at sea.
M
 
Not an issue if you know how much you need to correct. That 2sec/6days remains constant regardless of motion. No idea if temperature has an effect but that's not changing extremely during a transat.
A normal part of life at sea was sparky turning on the wheelhouse speaker once a day to relay the time signal so that the watch officer could check the chronometer and note the error in the Chronometer Book. Never saw a chronometer that kept perfect time. This was just a minor correction in the sight calculations. The error rate was usually steady. All you need is a short wave receiver and an understanding of the mysterious vagaries of the beeps that indicate the lead up and then the moment you are waiting for.
 
The Seiko probably is superior! The marks in the case may be repairers’ “scratches” - repairers usually add these for their own reference when they next see the watch.

Are they something like this? This is the back of the inner case of a pair cased verge watch - the lion passant tells us it is sterling silver, the anchor tells us it was made in Birmingham.....

Anchor means Hallmarked at Birmingham - could have been made anywhere.
 
Time signals....

WWV ( Colorado) and WWVH (Hawaii) are still putting out time signals on 2.5/5/10/15/ 20 MHz.... you can receive the 15MHz pips just about anywhere in the world on a basic SW receiver.... male voice = Colorado...female = Hawaii.

Rugby is more interesting, gone now but I thought for many years it was used by the BBC as well as the Navy. Seems it was not so... BBC LW was Droitwich wherever that may be .
I believe a major reason for the establishment of Rugby in the 1920's was transmitting to RN ships world wide.... especially submarines in the China Sea/ Japan area...
 
Rugby is more interesting, gone now but I thought for many years it was used by the BBC as well as the Navy. Seems it was not so... BBC LW was Droitwich wherever that may be …..

LW still comes from Droitwich, the twin masts are a very obvious landmark on the M5.
 
A little 'frequency drift' for insomniacs. Just a little...



Having been to sea for many years this familiar tune was considered to be the wake up the captain music as on many ships he liked to be on the bridge when it was relayed through from the radio room. Happy memories.
 
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