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Eye In The Sky said:So, for someone like me, how would you describe what a 'watch' is it its not your duty period? I see comments about stuff going on outside of your 'watch'...so I am alittle confused.
Wiki has a good description here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watch_system
The RCN (and other Commonwealth navies) use the "traditional" or "1 in 2", depending on the department and situation. When people start talking about "1 in 3" they are talking about the traditional with 3 sections. "1 in 4", etc means traditional with 4 teams, etc. That usually doesn't happen except for the watchkeepers if there are extras.
If you're on a 1-in-3 or higher, you generally have to be awake and doing work during the day, with some ships allowing for a nap before the middle (mids) watch. In 1-in-2, you're either on watch or off and can sleep then (other work depending).
The "other" watches spoken of are things like Anchor watch, Special Sea Duty, which aren't really "watches" but special situations. At anchor, you need less people so there's a reduced amount of people on watch, and SSD means that there's a specific job for each person (or in larger ships, 2 SSD watches) when needed, such as entering/leaving harbour, tough navigation passages, etc.