Grains in an old ship bottle. From the history of words and expressions

As some might think, breaking bottles on a ship does not mean breaking glass bottles of rum in a drunken stupor. The explanation of this expression is a little more complicated, but also more interesting. The word flask comes from the outdated name of the hourglass - a flask that had a half-hour power reserve. In the days of the sailing fleet, the sailor who stood on watch turned this watch over and simultaneously signaled this with a bell.

The bottles are equal to 30 minutes, and their number informs about the time that has passed since noon. 4 bottles, for example, will be equal to 2 o'clock in the afternoon. The change of watch on the sea vessel takes place every 4 hours and the countdown of bottles from 1st to 8th starts again. If someone asked what the flask is now, then this spoke of his interest in the time that has passed since 8 flasks were beaten off.

For more accurate operation of the hourglass, they were not placed on a hard surface, an ever-swinging ship, but suspended in a vertical position. There were two types of hourglasses: a half-hour glass (30 minutes) and a four-hour glass (4 hours). For observations of the bottles on sailing ships there was a sentry specially assigned for this. Beyond Expression "strike the bells", there is also an expression "surrender under the vial", which is no longer related to time reckoning, but means that “the one who gives under the bottle” gives some object for storage to the sentinel.

Ship's bell

The bell into which the flasks are beaten is called the bell, although this is not entirely true, since the sound of the bell that beats the flasks is considered to be the bell itself. The bell itself is called that - a ship's or ship's bell.

There are many maritime traditions associated with the ship's bell itself, here are some of them:

• A child born on a ship was baptized in a bell.
• The deceased sailor was escorted on his last journey with eight strokes, which in maritime business mean "the end of the watch." In Britain, the phrase "eight strokes of the bell" has the character of a speech turnover and is synonymous with the word "obituary".
• The New Year was celebrated on the ship with sixteen strokes of the bell. The most senior member of the crew struck eight times, and the junior sailor struck eight more after him.

ABOUT THE FLASK, RIND AND WATCH

Hourglass! They could probably
Traveling all the time, include in your destiny
Lisyansky's journal, Krusenstern's measurements,
Diary of Golovin and maps of Kotzebue.
(Sun. Christmas "Hourglass").

In each maritime museum, the attention of visitors is sure to be attracted by old navigational and sailor's life items. One of the most honorable places among them is occupied by an hourglass and a ship's bell - indispensable attributes of maritime symbolism.

Hourglass ... They were one of the very first navigational instruments. Sailors of the sailing fleet used them as a measure for counting the time of watches and when measuring the speed of a ship with a manual log. Sailors call an hourglass a "bottle" (in the old days they also called it a "bottle"). The same word denotes a half-hour period of time. "Breaking the flask" means to strike the bell every half an hour. The counting of time started at 00 hours 30 minutes - 1 beat (one flask), 2 beats (two flasks) - at 1 hour 00 minutes, 3 beats (three flasks) - at 1 hour 30 minutes and so on up to 8 flasks - at 4 o'clock . Then they started a new countdown from 1 to 8 bottles, etc.

If a sailor asked "Which bottle?" - this meant that he was interested in what half an hour went from eight bottles.

On sailing ships, a special sentry stood at the bell, whose duties included watching two flasks - a half-hour and a four-hour one. The hourglass was hung vertically for accurate time readings. When sand was poured from one half to the other in a half-hour flask, the sentry struck the bell and turned it over. Eight flasks were beaten when all the sand was poured into the four-hour flask. Since that time, the expression "surrender under the flask!", which means to hand over something under the protection of the sentry, has been preserved.

From the beginning of the 18th century, at noon, instead of eight flasks, and sometimes even after them, they "beat the rynda", i.e. they rang the bell with a special ringing - three short, abrupt strokes that followed one after the other. The history of the origin of the expression "beat the rynda" is interesting. From time immemorial, on the ships of the English fleet at noon, the watch officer gave the command: “Ring the bell” - “Ring the bell!”. She moved to the Russian fleet of Peter I, where the training of sailors was carried out mainly by foreign officers, many of whom gave commands in English. Over time, Russian sailors remade "ring the bel" into "rynda bey" - in harmony. Subsequently, by analogy with the popular expression "sound the alarm" in the fleet, "sound the bell" appeared. Unfortunately, in our time, a ship's bell is often and completely incorrectly called a bell, which never had and never has such a name.

It is important to note that from the time of Peter the Great, Russian sailors began to use the so-called nautical reckoning, in which the day began from noon of the previous day according to the civil calendar. The nautical reckoning was ahead of the civil calendar by 12 hours!

The ship's bell has not lost its significance in our time. As before, a wonderful maritime tradition lives on the ships of the Navy - "beating bottles". (It was also preserved on some ships of the merchant fleet). In addition, the ship's bell is needed to give signals in the fog when anchoring. On ships of the navy, it is needed to give a fire alarm and when lifting an anchor.

None of the sailors now use an hourglass, they stopped "beating the rynda", sailing ships on the ocean open spaces became rare guests. Sailors change, traditions in the fleets change, but it is believed that the bell and hourglass will forever remain an indispensable accessory not only for museums, but for all ships and ships as eternal symbols of the maritime profession.

N.A.Kalanov www.kalanov.ru

And the flasks continue to beat (O.P. Naumov)

In the port city, every half an hour, melodious bell strikes are heard from the harbor and from the roadstead. Being born almost simultaneously, they merge into a short chime and quickly fade, as if choking, on the wide surface of the bay. Flasks are broken on ships and ships. An old tradition lives on.

Yes, it's just a tradition now. And not everyone today will be able to answer the question, what does the expression to beat the flasks mean! And some, perhaps, will be horrified - why did the sailors need to break some bottles every half an hour?

Let's open the veil of time and take a look at that period of the life of the fleet, when the breaking of bottles was an urgent need on the ship.

In the old days, there were no accurate spring chronometers, and there was no point in putting bulky pendulum clocks on a ship. For a long time, the hourglass remained the only reliable mechanism for counting time at sea. Yes, yes, exactly those primitive glass cones, interconnected by a narrow neck, inside of which fine dry sand was placed. The cones were embedded in a wooden cage and braided with hemp. Loops were attached to the bottoms, for which the clock was hung. They were not afraid of pitching, even a violent storm could not make them stop their simple work. It was possible to stop this clock only in one case - by putting it on its side.

Sailors in many countries simply began to call these hourglasses as they called any glass vessel then. They did the same in Russia. Flasks appeared in the Russian sailing fleet.

In the centuries-old practice of navigation, the most convenient was the division of the day into four-hour intervals, which made up the time of one watch. And this interval itself was called the watch. That is why the largest bottle was a four-hour bottle, and the smallest - minute and half-minute, which were used when measuring the speed of the ship using a log. A half-hour bottle has become a unit of measurement of the current time on the ship. Therefore, the term bottle, in addition to the name of the hourglass, also meant a half-hour period of time.

Where the flasks were hung, there was always a sentry who monitored the pouring of sand from one flask to another. And at that moment, when the sand was completely poured into the lower flask of the half-hour flask, he turned it over and struck the bell - one short sharp blow. Everyone on the ship knew that half an hour of another four-hour period had passed. Half an hour later, two blows followed. And so on, until the top flask of the four-hour flask was also empty. At this moment, the sentry turned over both bottles and struck the bell for eight strokes. The next half an hour was marked again with one blow.

A four-hour bottle was turned over six times a day, and a half-hour bottle - forty-eight. And forty-eight times they rang the bell. These blows to the bell became known as the battle of the flasks. The expression to beat the flask (or beat the flask) meant to show the current time.

Sailors in the sailing fleet were so accustomed to counting time with bottles that no one on the ships asked: what time is it ?, but asked: “which bottle? by half past four, they said: the seventh flask is running out. After breaking through the seven flasks, the eighth flask is at the beginning. The appearance of spring clocks on ships led to a transition in the designation of time from flasks to clocks. For example, they say: flasks strike, say, twelve (hours ) or three hours.

Admiring the simple device of the hourglass, the sharp sailor's mind noticed everything in them and came up with such a riddle joke for his own amusement: Between two bowls, between three bipods, a window is stuck: crumbs fall on crumbs outside the window, little by little. And here is an even more accurate one: Put it on its feet - it runs; put on your head - runs; and hang on the wall - runs; and let it run; and hold - runs; and put it down - lies "(Dal. Sailor's leisure).

The sentry at the flasks often left something for storage, and hence the expression came to pass under the flasks (or under the flasks).

Only once did the general order of the indication of the current time change. At noon, instead of eight bottles, and according to other sources, after eight bottles, they beat the bell, that is, they rang the bell in a special order.

I must say that the expression to beat the rynda belongs only to the Russian maritime language. The history of its origin is known (see: Grotto Ya. Philological research. T. 2, St. Petersburg, 1885; Uspensky L, Word about words). At noon, of course, the bell was rung in the Russian Navy even before this expression appeared. The officer of the watch commanded the sentry, who stood at the ship's bell, the long-accepted English command: Ring the belli (Ring the bell!), And the sailor carried it out.

Over time, this team was redone in a Russian way, the word ring was replaced by the outdated word rynda, which sounds similar in sound, and the word bey, a bell. Initially, the expression sounded ryndu bey. And then these words were rearranged. The expression beat (beat) rynda was more familiar to the Russian ear. It is noted in the Explanatory Dictionary of V. I. Dahl.

They beat the bell on ships and in cases not related to the indication of the current time. For example, at the time of sunrise; upon leaving the harbor, if everything was fine on the ship; at the moment of imminent danger. At the end of the last century, they stopped beating the rynda.

Today, there are two records of time on ships and ships. The main daily, twenty-four hours. Associated with it is the maintenance of all journals. And the second - on watch, four hours, with the beating of flasks every half an hour.

If you look closely at the engravings that adorn the title pages of old nautical books, then on many of them you can see images of things that have faithfully served the navigators of the past for hundreds of years and helped turn the art of navigation into a science that is practically accessible to everyone.

Your gaze will first of all stop at the anchor, though not too similar to modern ones, and even to that traditional anchor that has become familiar to everyone for a long time, which we are used to seeing on naval buttons and sailor belt buckles. You will find here a scroll of cards, also not very reminiscent of those that you started using back in school. You will also see a compass card with an intricately painted “Nord” rhumb, and a star globe, and a faceted weight of the lot, and a sector of a manual lag, and a telescope, and ... a strange device that looks like two large bottles connected by necks and enclosed in a fence from wooden slats. Such a device today cannot be found on any ship, except in the cabin of a zealot of maritime antiquity.

But there was a time when not a single captain would have dared to go on a long voyage without such a device that served to measure and store time. Simply put, it was a marine hourglass.

A watch that was comfortable enough, not too heavy, relatively accurate and reliable, was the dream of sailors for centuries, until it finally appeared in the 16th century. Clocks have existed since ancient times. Before the hourglass came to ships, people had long been able to measure time. Even the Egyptian priests millennia ago drew attention to the uniformity of the apparent movement of the Sun. They first came up with a primitive, and then more advanced sundial, which showed time with an accuracy of one or two minutes. But such watches were not suitable for sailors. Firstly, they worked only during the day, and, moreover, only in clear weather. Secondly, the sundial was a stationary time indicator, showing, as we say now, only local time, and ships, as you know, do not stand still. Such hours were unsuitable for them.

Later, in the 2nd millennium BC, someone in Rome drew attention to the uniformity of the fall of drops of liquid from a leaky vessel. The tenacious human mind immediately seized on this phenomenon, and soon a water clock appeared - clepsydra. Although their accuracy was not great, but at that time it turned out to be sufficient.

However, sailors and water clocks were not good. It was worth tilting the clepsydra a little, and she began to shamelessly lie. During a storm, water splashed out of the vessels and such clocks generally refused to work, but is it conceivable to imagine a ship whose deck does not rock?

When the hourglasses came to the ships, they behaved much more steadily during pitching. They could be closed hermetically, but the indications of such watches did not change from this. And they suited the sailors at that time quite well. Pretty quickly, on ships, the hourglass became simply irreplaceable. And yet, having served for less than 300 years, they retired forever. However... These clumsy clocks have done such a great service to sailors that they are still remembered on the ships of the fleet every half an hour.

In Russia, the hourglass in the fleet came into general use in 1720, when Peter I introduced his Naval Charter. At that time, according to the table of supply, each ship relied on half-hour and four-hour hourglasses. The sharp-tongued sailors very soon dubbed the half-hour clock "bottles." The four o'clock got a less expressive name.

The same Naval Charter divided the ship's day into six different periods of time, called the German word Wacht - guard. The sailors quickly remade it in the Russian way. It turned out to be a watch. In this form, this word has taken root in the fleet.

Ship watches were a great innovation: before that, all appointments for work and their duration, as well as rest periods, were made by eye and ultimately depended on the will of the ship's commander. Now he divided the time of work and rest, strictly based on the paragraph of the charter and the readings of the clock. The sailor defended a four-hour watch or worked out the allotted time - go to rest. Rested for four hours - again step on the watch or do ship work. And no bickering, no arguing about who had to work harder. There was a strict order. And breakfast on time, by the hour, and lunch, and dinner. In a word, mode! And where there is order and order, there is discipline. Where there is discipline, the work is better done. This has become an axiom, suitable both for past times and for our days. Today it is even difficult to imagine how the ships sailed when there were no watches.

It was this German word that called the four-hour hourglass. And firmly settled on the poop of the ships flasks and watches. It seemed that they would never give up their place and their purpose to anyone. Moreover, at the end of the 18th century (that is, more than two hundred years later than X. Huygens created the pendulum clock) on Russian warships, one more hourglass was added to the flasks and watches, designed for exactly one hour.

It was important that they all stood in the place allotted for this, and the entire crew of the ship treated these glass idols with due respect. Still would! After all, on the ship it was a kind of temple of time. A sailor on duty, specially appointed for this purpose, performed sacred rites near the flasks, like a priest-guardian of time.

Probably, our distant ancestors also carefully supported the flame in the hearth in those days when people already knew how to use fire, but had not yet learned how to make it. At that time, the extinguished fire sometimes meant the death of the tribe.

To be left on a ship without an idea of ​​time does not, of course, mean to perish. But this certainly means the loss of the basis of order and, what is even more terrible, the loss of any idea of ​​the longitude on which the ship is located.

In the years in question, many navigators (and not only sailors) already quite clearly understood what geographical latitude and longitude were. Knowing the latitude and longitude, people easily found any point on the map. And they knew how to determine the latitude quite accurately, even being separated from the coast. For example, in the Northern Hemisphere, it was enough to measure the angle between the North Star and the horizon. In degrees, this angle expressed the latitude of the place. There were other ways to determine the latitude, which gave sufficient accuracy for safe navigation. But with the definition of longitude, things did not go well for a long time.

The best minds of mankind tried to find a way to determine longitude that would satisfy the sailors. As early as the beginning of the 16th century, Galileo Galilei was working on solving this problem. In 1714, the British government announced a huge prize for anyone who could find a way to determine longitude at sea to an accuracy of half a degree. At about the same time, a special Bureau of Longitudes was created in England. But things were moving slowly. And it was all the more annoying that the key to solving the problem was found a long time ago - an accurate clock! That was all that sailors needed to accurately determine longitude at sea. After all, the Sun makes its apparent movement around the Earth in exactly 24 hours. During this time, it passes all 360 degrees of longitude. This means that in one hour the star goes west by 15 degrees. Therefore, knowing the difference between Greenwich time (taken as zero) and local (ship) time at any point in the ship's location, one can determine the longitude by a simple calculation. But the trouble was that to know this difference was far from easy. It is not easy to find out the time of the ship: you just need to accurately notice the moment when the Sun above the ship comes to its highest point. And Greenwich time, at first glance, is even easier to calculate: just before swimming, set your watch to Greenwich time and do not translate the arrows. But in those days there were no accurate astronomical clocks (chronometers, as they were later called), and the pocket watches that already existed ran very inaccurately: some ran ahead, others lagged behind no one knows how much, or even completely stopped. And sailors still preferred to use bottles, not thinking about determining longitude accurate enough for sailing, which required hours with a fraction of a second deviation from true time. Creating such a clock then seemed impossible. Peter I, for example, equated an attempt to determine the exact longitude of a place with attempts to invent a perpetual motion machine or turn cheap metals into gold, that is, he considered it completely fruitless.

Analyzing the sea voyages of the sailors of the Middle Ages, experts noticed that, from our point of view, they sailed in a strange way: first they went north or south, and only then, having reached the desired latitude, they turned west or east at a right angle and walked, trying to keep to the achieved latitude. This method of sailing required additional time, unnecessary setting of sails, and so on. But still, it was more reliable at sea, at least one of the coordinates - latitude - the navigator knew for sure. However, such a voyage also did not give full confidence that the ship would arrive at the desired point. And sometimes it led to curiosities. Thus, the Spanish expedition of Mendaña de Neira discovered the Solomon Islands in the Pacific Ocean in 1567-1569. But not a single navigator could later find them, until two centuries later the French expedition of Louis Antoine de Bougainville “discovered” the “disappeared” archipelago again.

Even when relatively accurate marine chronometers appeared, determining the exact longitude remained a very difficult task. Already in the 19th century, when it was necessary to determine the longitude of the Pulkovo meridian with the greatest possible accuracy (this was necessary for the normal operation of the newly built observatory), the exact time had to be “carried” on a ship from Greenwich. To do this, equipped an entire expedition. Chronometers were collected from the ships of the Russian fleet. In all of Russia, there were less than a dozen of them. And when, with the advent of the telegraph, they checked the accepted longitude of the Pulkovo observatory, it turned out that the longitude was determined not quite accurately.

But all this was much later. And at the beginning of the 18th century, under Peter I, exactly at noon, the whole three hourglasses turned over and, so that everyone on the ship knew about it, special blows were heard on the ship's bell. From that moment on, the carefully washed, sifted and dried sand in the flasks again began to pour from the upper reservoirs to the lower ones. And the sailor - the keeper of time warily guarded the moment when their upper tank was empty. When the last grains of sand fell through the narrow opening between the flasks, he instantly turned the flasks over, and everything started over again. This operation required the utmost attention and vigilance. Not everyone could be trusted. Not without reason in those days in the fleet there was an expression "surrender under a bottle", which meant "surrender under reliable protection."

It was troublesome and expensive to keep time on the ship. For this, special people had to be kept. According to the decree of Peter the Great, the "bottle master" who was responsible for the proper maintenance of the clock was in charge of them. All these people were not sitting idle. Every half an hour it was necessary to turn one watch, every hour another, and every four hours a third. And so that everyone on the ship knew that the passage of time was being watched vigilantly and vigilantly, as if doing all the operations, the crew was notified by a sound signal - by striking the ship's bell: "they beat the bottle." Of course, no one beat the flasks themselves. On the contrary, sailors took care of their fragile glass watches like the apple of their eye, especially in a storm. Knowing the harsh burrows of the ocean, they lashed (that is, firmly fastened) in advance all objects that could move and damage the watch. The clock itself was carefully inserted into special nests lined with soft felt.

The bell, in which the “flasks were beaten”, was small, 25-50 centimeters high. He appeared on the ships much earlier than the bottles. It was believed that the ringing of these bells scares away the evil forces that inhabited the seas and oceans. In addition, already at the dawn of navigation, helmsmen realized that they needed a bell to prevent collisions with other ships. There were no other means of notification about yourself then. Typhons and horns had not yet been invented; the dim light of ship's lanterns, filled with oil, was difficult to notice even on a clear night. You will not burn the torch all the time, but the bell is always ready for action, and its ringing is difficult to confuse with anything else. It spreads far around both day and night, and its sound does not get stuck even in thick fog. It is not surprising that it was the ship's bell that was adapted to "beat off the bottles."

At half-past twelve the bells were struck once in one direction. In an hour, one double blow was made on both sides of the bell; for the masters of “beating the flasks”, this blow turned out to be almost continuous. At half past two, one double blow and one single blow were made, and so on until the end of the watch, adding every half an hour a blow in one direction. At the end of the watch, four double blows were beaten off - eight "flasks" - and everything started all over again. There was a new watch. Stepping on it, taking watch at the same time as the last blow of the four-hour bottle in the fleet has always been considered a sign of good manners and high maritime culture. This is understandable - time on ships has always been appreciated and respected!

Ship bells are still on every warship, on all ships of the merchant fleet. They are cast from a special "bell metal": an alloy of copper, tin and zinc. The “voice” of the bell depends on the proportion in which they are included in the alloy. In the old days, bells turned out to be especially harmonious if silver was added to the alloy from which they were cast. In our practical time, of course, precious metals are dispensed with. Once upon a time, “personal” bells were cast for each ship with raised letters of its name and year of construction. Nowadays, the name of the ship is engraved on the lower edge of the bell around the circumference.

For a long time, the bell was treated with respect on ships. And today, like hundreds of years ago, sailors are polishing ship bells and other, as sailors say, copper, meaning a variety of copper parts. If the bell is kept in order, it is clear that the naval service on this ship is carried out regularly. Every half an hour, the sailor on duty takes a short tackle attached to the "tongue" of the bell - it is called a rynda-bulin - and beats off the flasks. Having heard the ringing of the bell, all crew members will unmistakably know what time it is and whether it is time for them to get ready for the watch. Our Ship Charter still retains the command: “Beat the flasks!” Such is the naval tradition!

In our time, ships have typhons, horns, howlers, speakers and megaphones that amplify the human voice many times over. There are radios and other means of warning ships that are dangerously close to each other. But the ship's bell has not lost its original purpose even today. And when somewhere, for example, off the coast of Britain (English Channel), an impenetrable fog suddenly falls on the sea, an officer of the watch comes out to the bridge and gives the command: “Ring the bell”

By the way, it was from this phrase that the name with which the Russian sailors dubbed the ship's bell came from.

Creating a regular fleet, Peter I began to borrow terms and commands from foreign fleets, he also took the command: Ring the bell! ("Ring the bell!"). The officers gave this command in English, and the sailors obediently carried it out, without thinking about the meaning of the words, and very soon remade this foreign command in their own way. "Ryndu bey!" - they did it in harmony. The team took root in the fleet. And since you can beat someone or something, soon the ship's bell itself began to be called a rynda. Strictly speaking, this is not true. In the days of the sailing fleet, a special fight in the ship's bell was called a bell. Every day, when the sun reached its zenith, triple blows were beaten off on the ship, notifying the crew that true noon had come. This triple bell ringing was called the rynda. The custom of "beating the rynda" has outlived its time, and its name passed to the bell, which is sometimes called the bell today.

Having served in the Navy for more than one century, the ship's bell still serves on military and commercial ships.

Over time, the need to mark the time of the onset of noon appeared on the coast, and above all in the capital of the Russian Empire - St. Petersburg.

For a long time it was believed that the midday shot from the wall of the Peter and Paul Fortress was introduced by Peter I, but this is not so. For the first time this idea was born after the death of Peter the Great. The idea was to give the residents of St. Petersburg the opportunity to accurately set a wall or pocket clock once a day, and to ordinary people to know that it was noon.

This need arose especially sharply in the second half of the 18th century in connection with the rapid development of trade and navigation. The chime of the clock from the bell tower of the Cathedral of St. Peter and Paul did not reach the outskirts of the overgrown city of Petrov, the southern border of which then ran along the Fontanka, and the northern border along Bolshoy Prospekt of Vasilyevsky Island. Professor of astronomy, mathematician Joseph Delisle, who arrived in St. Petersburg from Paris at the invitation of Peter himself back in 1724 and was appointed director of the astronomical observatory, presented on December 22, 1735, at a regular meeting of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences, a report on the method of giving a loud sound signal.

Joseph Delisle proposed firing from the Admiralty on a signal from the tower of the Kunstkamera, where the then astronomical observatory was located and there were “serviceable meridians and the right clock”, but this project was bogged down - the bureaucracy in the Russian state was always in force. In the 19th century, the buildings of one of the world's largest Main Russian Observatories grew up on the Pulkovo Heights, which was also responsible for the tasks of practical astronomy, including time measurement.

In 1863, signals of the exact Pulkovo time began to be transmitted by wire to the central telegraph office, and from there to the railway stations of the entire Russian Empire. At the end of 1864, a cable was connected to one of the cannons that stood in the Admiralty courtyard from a special clock located on the Central Telegraph, and on February 6, 1865, the signal cannon first announced the onset of noon. The time was strictly adjusted according to the astronomical clock of the Pulkovo Observatory. The midday shot from the Admiralty Yard thundered daily until September 23, 1873. Then the shipyard ceased to exist here, and the firing position had to be moved to the Naryshkinsky bastion of the Peter and Paul Fortress. There, the signal gun until July 1934 at exactly noon daily reminded of itself.

Years flew by, the guns on the bastion were updated, one generation of scorers replaced another, but this tradition has survived to this day.

Many believe that it exists only in the city on the Neva, and are deeply mistaken. In Vladivostok, from the top of the Tigrovaya Sopka, at exactly 12:00 local time, a peaceful shot also rumbles. It was first heard on August 30, 1889. This tradition continued until the end of the war. Then for some time the gun was silent. It was decided to restore it on October 10, 1970.

By the way, the inhabitants and sailors of the Kronstadt fortress also used to compare their watches by the shot of a cannon installed on the shore of the harbor in Petrovsky Park.

Beating noon every day is a tradition that we inherited from the Russian fleet. It should not be forgotten, it should be sacredly honored and remembered.