Watchstanding regulate the sailors' duty watches and for other purposes (see main article). Unlike civil clock bells, the strikes of a ship's bell do not accord to the number of the hour. Instead, there are eight bells, one for each half-hour of a four-hour watch. Bells would be struck every half-hour, and in a pattern of pairs for easier counting, with any odd bells at the end of the sequence. Watchstanding Watchstanding, or watchkeeping, in nautical terms concerns the division of qualified personnel to operate a ship continuously. On a typical seafaring vessel, be it naval or merchant, personnel keep watch
Nautical fiction the shore"focusing on the effect of a nautical culture on the larger culture or society ashore or individuals not familiar with nautical life; by example Iglesias points to how Jane Austen's novels don't represent the genre, because, though the sea plays a prominent part in their plots, it keeps actual sea-culture at a "peripheral presence"; similarly, Iglesias describes earlier English novels like "Robinson Crusoe" (1719), "Moll Flanders" (1722), or "Roderick Random" (1748) as populating the naval world with characters unfamiliar with the sea to better understand land-bound society, not fulfilling the immersive generic expectations of nautical fiction. From the development