I’ll say based on my own experiences as a traveler: Cruise ships do provide time change announcements in 4 ways: In a morning or noon audio announcement the day before, on the ship’s information television channel, in the written bulletin for the next day, and in a card left on the bed by the steward. Additionally, waiters and stewards frequently remind guests the evening before as well.
In the age of steamers, and in ocean liners today (as opposed to cruises), how much freedom do passengers have to go above deck or at least into a well-lit area? Hasn’t it been shown that sunlight helps mitigate time zone differences? So if they were exposed to the sun that might be a factor as well.
For me, the sun works when I’m going east but not when I’m going west. I feel loagy for a couple days when I go east but when I’m outside my body adjusts to it well. Whereas when I travel west there’s nothing that’s going to prevent me from waking up in the middle of the night. But at least waking up too early is not as bad as waking up in what feels like the middle of the night.
hajario, a 9 AM conference call would mean you’d be in the meeting an hour before you usually wake up, and so you’d have to wake up even earlier to get dressed and get to work and so on.
You’re correct. I misread that. I have to say that I can’t recall ever having a call that early in my nearly 30 years as a professional but I wouldn’t have been happy about it if I did.
That’s a cite for modern cruise ships, not for “the age of steamers” as in the OP.
As a regular cruiser, I can state with some authority that most of us are pretty well aware that any moment has three possible times.
Ships time, which is the one that matters if you don’t want to be late for dinner, or the show. It is crucial to be sure about the time you have to be back on board after a shore trip.
Local time, which, of course, matters if you need to catch a train or visit an attraction that only stays open for set hours.
Home time - this is only really important to people who like to stay in constant touch with the folks back home.
This captures the idea, but there is no need to set a local clock. For a noon sight, all you need to do is “mark” (record timethe chronometer, set to Greenwich time, reads) when the sun reaches it’s local apex. This removes two potential sources of error (setting of local time clock, and comparing to chronometer)
But the sun may be obscured by clouds at local noon. So this simple technique may not serve your needs.
What you can do then is sight the sun, moon, any planet or star (well away from polaris, or southern cross) at whatever elevation it happens to be at any time, but preferably within a few hours of local zenith, noting the chronometer time of the sight. You then consult your ephemeral tables, and you locate the point on the earth where that celestial body would be directly overhead at that time. You then place the point of your compass at that point, and set the radius based on the angular difference your sextant measured from directly overhead, (60 nm/degree = 1nm/arc minute) and you know you are on that circle. If you know your approximate latitude (perhaps from sighting polaris the night before) then you know your position as being where that circle crosses your latitude.
If you are unsure of your latitude, you can then either sight polaris, or sight any second celestial body, or wait and sight the same body later (sun-run-sun) and you get a second circle which narrows your position down to one of the two points where the circles cross, one of which will typically be obviously wrong. You do of course have to compensate for the distance traveled between the sights, but at historic ship speeds, this made little difference, but the magnetic course and log (speed indication) would let you get within a mile or two.
I think there’s a difference though. Sure, the time change always happens in the middle of the night Sat-Sunday. But when I’m on vacation , I’m not affected by the time change and when I go back to work after a staycation , it takes me a few days to adjust back to my normal schedule.
The financial markets I get, but tech companies are largely the opposite. The big ones are all HQ’d out here, so our colleagues on the east coast are often stuck taking a late call or two.
And sports was dealt with elsewhere - it seems the major, nationally-broadcast games are designed to split the difference. I don’t want MNF starting at 5:30, but most east coasters don’t want it starting at 8:30 either. I think most folks would like it to start around, say, 7:00 in their local TZ.
I work on the east coast with companies all across the US. The center of mass seems to be east coast for the people I work with - 9AM EST telcons force Californians to be at the office at 6 more than 3PM PST meetings keep me in the office late. But I’m sure it depends on the industry.
OK. It sure sounded like she was saying that people in general don’t get time zones, not people in “the age of steamers”.
Maybe she will clarify.
East coast techie here; my coworkers are in the US and India, mostly, with some in Europe and a few in China and Australia. We’re aware of time zones and everyone deals with calls at odd hours. My company has it’s HQ in Texas, my division has it’s HQ in DC, most of my coworkers are in MA or India.
The key word is largely. The supergiants - Apple, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Facebook - are all based in California or Washington. Silicon Valley / San Francisco is the center of the startup and venture capital community. Of course there are companies that have HQs in Texas, NY, Boston, Florida, etc. But it’s not where the weight of the sector lies.
Anyway, back to steamers…
To the people mentioning time changes not being as disruptive on vacation, remember, in the age of steamers, not all folks on the ship would be vacationers. If you were traveling anywhere on another continent, for business or pleasure, it had to be by ship.
On the other hand, I doubt that there were many business trips for one day of meetings, back when the travel took a week each way. If a business trip includes a month of business, then it’s no big deal to allow for an extra day or two at each end to adjust to the local time.
I once read a biography of Harry Crosby, who was born American but living in Paris; his significant other, Polly Peabody (later Caresse Crosby), was staying in New York at the time. In September 1922, he travelled across the Atlantic on a six-day journey, proposed to Polly via wireless telegram from aboard, married her on the day of his arrival in New York, and was back with her, on the same ship heading for France, two days later. But these feats were certainly exceptional, and I would agree that your average business traveller would stay much longer at the destination than today’s morning in, evening back frequent flyer.
My experience when living in Japan was that a trip to Europe meant a time change of around seven hours, I felt awful for a week, and not too good for another week. So about two weeks in all. I followed the recommendations about adjusting to local time, which could be tough when arriving at 07:30 and having to stay awake the whole day.
The shift from summer time to winter time or vice versa, or across one time zone in Europe, is not much of a problem, and I feel adjusted after two days.