While one shift worked their four-hour watch, the other rested and played cards.

Flattery squirmed in his couch, settling himself for the four-hour watch.

"Too damned fat and lazy to stand a four-hour watch."

His young students took command in four-hour watches, with at least one breakout from overdrive in each watch.

These young men kept their four-hour watches on the machinery until they could barely stand in the overwhelming noise and heat.

Instead, there are eight bells, one for each half-hour of a four-hour watch.

But lack of sleep due to the four-hour night watches was a perfectly reasonable, if not wholly true, explanation for both.

With a normal complement of 35, crew members work through a rotation of five jobs on a standard four-hour watch.

"Those guys were probably on a four-hour watch," Bolan muttered.

This was historically used to mark the passage of time on board a vessel, including the duration of four-hour watches.