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The Seth Thomas “Helmsman” ship’s bell strike clock has been popular for many years. It was introduced in the late 1950s or early 1960s, and made into the 1980s or longer.

Seth Thomas "Helmsman" ship's bell clock

The Helmsman uses a movement made by Hermle in Germany. The movements made in the 1960s have the patent number 2,974,473 stamped on the back plate. The patent describes a system for doing the ship’s bell strike. See this web page for strike examples. Ship’s bell striking operates on a four hour cycle with pairs of bell strikes on each hour, and pairs of strikes plus a single strike on the half hour:

12:00 XX XX XX XX

12:30 X

1:00 XX

1:30 XX X

2:00 XX XX

2:30 XX XX X

3:00 XX XX XX

3:30 XX XX XX X

4:00 XX XX XX XX

and so on, repeating every 4 hours.

The inventor of the patent is Richard Kramer, and the patent was assigned to General Time Corporation (parent company of Seth Thomas at that time).

The fact that General Time, and not Hermle, received the patent, leads me to believe that this movement was specially made for Seth Thomas. Later, of course, other companies used this movement in their clocks (including the Chelsea “shipstrike” clocks).

One interesting feature of Kramer’s design is that a “dummy” strike without the bell is performed at 15 minutes before the hour. This prepares the strike for the next hour, when 1, 2, 3, or 4 pairs of strikes are sounded. In later years, the design was changed, and the “dummy” strike cycle was eliminated.

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I recently added chime and strike sounds of many of the Hermle and Chelsea clocks to the Bills Clockworks web site. It was challenging to record the sounds and have them sound realistic. The microphone had to be located close to the clock (about 8″ away) or else too much background noise was picked up and the recording was not loud enough, but the closeness over-emphasized the mechanical noises from the movement (such as the click made near the end of the chime when the strike is being activated). In real life, the listener is not aware of these sounds when she is located several feet or more away from the clock.

A challenge was to make the sound buttons compatible with as many types of computers as possible. I did not want a sound player window to pop up, I wanted just a button that the user can click to play the sound. On some windows PCs, the user must give permission the first time a button is clicked. Macintosh computers that I have tested handle the sound fine.

Please test these sounds on your PC and let me know if they play. Also tell me the type of PC (Mac or windows), operating system (such as Windows XP or Vista), and the web browser (such as Explorer 6 or 7). You may leave a comment below. These two links will open a new window or tab in your browser:

Hermle Chime and Strike Sounds

Chelsea Ship’s Bell Strike Sounds

Thanks!

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On modern German clocks, such as Westminster chiming wall, mantel and grandfather clocks (by makers such as Hermle, Howard Miller, Bulova and Ridgeway), it is easy to correct the clock if it is striking the wrong hour after the hour chime. Suppose the clock strikes 6 times but the hour hand is pointing to 7 o’clock. Proceed as follows:

• Grasp the HOUR (short) hand near the center of the dial and move it to the correct hour (6 in this example). The hand is a friction fit on its shaft
• Using the MINUTE (long) hand, set the clock to the correct time. You may turn it backward or forward to the correct time, but if you go forward, be sure to pause each quarter hour for the clock to chime. If you move the hands backwards, the chime will re-synchronize within 2 hours.

Note: On older and antique clocks, do not move the minute hand backward past a point where the clock will strike or chime. There are many variations in clock movement design. If you have any doubts, only move the minute hand forward.

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