tethered to a burning sphere

A few nights ago I learned about ship’s bell time via the extremely roundabout process of: came across the term «склянки» in a Russian text, used in a phrase to the effect of “it was two склянки shipboard time”; Googled «две склянки» because I had no idea what this meant; got a Russian webpage telling me this was derived from hourglasses and providing a bunch of quotes translated from English literature, including one from Treasure Island; pulled a copy of Treasure Island from Project Gutenberg; found the English version of the translated sentence, which uses “three bells” to refer to “half past one”; Googled about ship’s bell timekeeping…

…All of which had me thinking that the Russian webpage was just wrong, but then it occurred to me that, of course, 30-minute increments for the ship’s bell necessarily would be kept by hourglass, it’s just that the Russian sailing terminology for a half-hour interval refers to the shipboard hourglass itself, while English refers to the resulting strike of the bell. I love language differences like this.