Sailing the ocean blue
Time difference
![[19014] Queen Mary returns troops to New York](/images/19014_tcm4-59842.jpg "[19014] Queen Mary returns troops to New York")
 Queen
Mary arrives in New York harbour
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When transatlantic services began in the 1840s, people had rarely
travelled such a long distance so regularly. On arriving at a
British port, it would take American sailors time to get used to
the fact that their onboard clock was around five hours behind
local time. Similarly, people travelling to America from Britain
would appear to lose five hours. At this point, Britain had only
just achieved a standard time throughout the country - previously,
towns would have had their own 'local time'.
Time difference would not become a notable problem for
transatlantic travellers until the era of supersonic air travel
aboard Concorde, when it would be possible to arrive in America at
an earlier time than leaving Britain. However, it did matter when
calculating journey time for BlueRiband attempts - Greenwich Mean (London) Time is used
throughout. Otherwise, it would be possible for westbound ships to
record the local time of departure from Britain and the local time
of arrival in New York and appear to cut five hours off the time of
their voyage.
Some of Cunard's early voyage record books for ships sailing
between Liverpool and Halifax, Canada show time differences of
anything between three and seven hours. In a famous case of 1902, a
transatlantic crossing record attempt by Norddeutcher Lloyd
vessel Kronprinz Wilhelm was disallowed because the
ship's captain had incorrectly calculated the journey time.
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