Dogwatch

Traditionally, in the Royal Navy, the day is divided into five four-hour watches and two dogwatches of two hours each. These two shortened dogwatches are from four to six pm and six to eight pm. During these two watches, the crew would usually have their evening meal. The most likely explanation of its origin is connected to a dog’s sleep, an expression for a short, fitful sleep, although of course there would be no sleeping on watch which would constitute a very serious offence. A dogwatch simply means a short watch in the same way that a dog-sleep means a short sleep and dates from the late 17th/early 18th century. In one of Patrick O’Brian’s novels, set in the Napoleonic era, Stephen Maturin, the ship’s surgeon, makes the pun that the dogwatch is so-called because it is cur-tailed.