Thirteen years ago, on an invitation from former Mayor Compton Young, a four-man team from the Smithsonian Institution (SI) came to Georgetown to service the Stabroek Market clock, and was subsequently asked to service all the public clocks.

The team comprised leader David Shayt, head of the History of Engineering Machinery at SI; David Todd an SI Clockmaker and Museum Specialist; Eric Longe, SI photographer and Larry Jones, Machinist.

They duly embarked on their task of recording, documenting, preserving, servicing and restoring Guyana’s clocks and bells under the auspices of SI, which had agreed to treat it as a research project to be funded by the institution’s Bio-diversity of the Guianas Project. That project came to an end with the return of the Barraud clock last month. The men’s labour was given as a gift of love to the nation and the Smithsonian Institution paid their other expenses.

Shayt’s involvement in the project was not a coincidence, because he had lived in Guyana in the early seventies, when he developed an interest in the public clocks and the lighthouse. Shayt joined the Smithsonian Institution in 1977, and when he returned to Guyana to re-aquaint himself with an old friend, he was armed with new knowledge about old machinery. His pet peeve, he said, was then and still is the lighthouse.

On the first trip the four-man team was scheduled to service - preferably at no cost, because at that time the Clerk of Markets had no money to pay for such an exercise - the clocks at Stabroek, Bourda, La Penitence and Kitty Markets, and the post offices. However, the Kitty Market and the Bourda Post Office clocks are electrical, and whenever there is a power outage, the clocks would stop keeping time, so it made no sense to try and fix them. All the other clocks are hand-wound - wound up with weights.

They also looked at the Corriverton Market clock and the New Amsterdam City Hall clock.

Stabroek Market Clock
On his return to Guyana in 1982, Shayt said that he went on a visit to the Stabroek Market clock, and that is where the entire series of trips originated. Shayt said he felt a connection with the Stabroek Market clock, because it had been made by E. Howard in Boston, and his middle name is Howard. And so began a voluminous correspondence between himself and Schuler Griffith, Clerk of Markets, while subsequently letters were also exchanged with Mayor Young and the Director of the Museum. In 1990 the team came and serviced the clock.

It turned out that the time-piece was in dire need of servicing; it had been consumed by rust as a consequence of the climate and exposure to the elements, and it took all of six months to fix. The Stabroek Market clock has the four largest dials in the country.

During the expedition the team managed to identify more clocks than the City Council had listed, and to record them. Other clocks which have been located and serviced are two at different churches in New Amsterdam and one each at a Wismar church and a Linden church.

The SI specialists also serviced the Botanical Garden clock. All the clocks are unchanged since their construction and Todd and Shayt said it was the concern of the Institution to keep them that way, as its motto is ‘to increase and diffuse one’s knowledge.’

After the first couple of trips here, the team was reduced to just Todd and Shayt. Discovering that most of the clocks needed a bell to work, the two men decided to add bells to their list, which enabled them to uncover two unique bells in Guyana, one great bell made from steel and another from bronze.

They have also been able to research and record the history of the clocks at the new post offices, Bourda and Kitty, and the bells at Sacred Heart Church, Christ Church, a church in New Amsterdam and another in the Mazaruni prison. The oldest bell the team has discovered thus far is one in St Peter’s Church in Leguan that was made in 1774.

The team also indicated that some of the clocks that they had discovered on their earlier trips have since disappeared, like the floral clock that used to be in the National Park.

The horologists feel that the main reason for the local clocks not working is the weather conditions of this country: “The salt breeze is not good for them,” said Todd. He cited lack of regular servicing as another reason, since “most of the clocks need to be serviced at least once a month and wound at least once a week.”

Since our public clocks are all in the open air and attract metal contamination they must be cared for in order to work properly.

Todd feels that all the clocks in Guyana should be placed in protective housings, although he indicated that some of the problems in the case of the older clocks could be age related.

Barraud Clock (the High Court building)
This clock was made in 1800 but was not installed in the High Court until 1887. Where it was for 87 years is a mystery, but Todd and Shayt suggest that it is possible that the clock was at one time in the Public Buildings which were opened in 1834. “It could be the same clock which was stored in the clock hole at the Public Buildings,” said Shayt.

Prior to that it could have been in a guard house and armoury which stood in the heart of the city, near to where the High Court stands now. There is an architect’s drawing of a guard house and armoury dating from the beginning of the nineteenth century, which has a clock that could conceivably be the Barraud Clock. It was still there in 1823, when it was represented in Bryant’s sketches of the militia mustering outside St Andrew’s Kirk during the Demerara Rising of that year.

Fixing the Barraud Clock, which stopped working as long ago as 1960, was a challenge for Todd, since a number of parts needed replacing. Some of these were unavailable and had to be reconstructed, and in some cases the tools to reconstruct the parts themselves first had to be made.

Shayt and Todd dismantled the Barraud Clock and took it to Washington to be restored. This was also done with the Georgetown hospital clock and Public Buildings wall clock. With the help of a retired friend, Todd was able to restore the clock but left some of the old parts untouched for historical reasons.

The bell which is part of the clock was not restored; it was left in its original form. However, the hammer for the bell is still missing. “The clock,” Todd said, “should last the next 100-200 years, as it was built to endure the climate of the country.”

In a bid to help Guyana keep proper time, the Smithsonian team said they took a Guyanese to the United States and trained him for three months in clock maintenance, so the clocks which they had already serviced could be maintained. They indicated disappointment that this training was never put to use.

Their new interest now is in one of the most recent clocks in Georgetown - that installed at the New Building Society in 2000. This clock is totally American and arouses the interest of the two experts because it chimes on the half hour. They were told it was put up to make sure that bankers arrive for appointments on time.

Guyana is the only country where the SI historians were actually able to understand the time-keeping methods, even though they noted that Guyanese do not seem to have an intense commitment to time. Shayt and Todd have managed to record, photograph and preserve most of the country’s time-keeping instruments.

Lighthouse
“The lighthouse is where it all began and ended,” Shayt said. “I was always obsessed with the mechanism of the lighthouse, and I made it my duty to visit it whenever I got the chance, and so this time when we came I saw that the clockwork mechanism was not working. We insisted on making it work before we left.”

The light is operated by a clock system and the lights were out. The mechanism had stalled, and because of the importance of a lighthouse at a country’s harbour they spent the last three days in Guyana fixing it.

They were granted permission by Volton Skeete, Acting Harbour Master to take the 1862 clock apart and restore it. Chance Brothers in Birmingham built the lighthouse clock from brass. The clock, Todd and Shayt said, needs occasional care. The lighthouse keeper needs to wind it every four hours at night, specifically for the ships.

Todd was an apprentice instrument-maker for fifteen years in the British army, specialising in optical and fire control instruments. His main interest back then was mechanical instruments, and he was only vaguely interested in clocks.

In 1963, he was posted in South Arabia where he met a man and was trained in clock making. Then in 1965, he went back to England, to teach soldiers the maintenance of army equipment.

When he left the army in 1969, he began working for someone who sold antique clocks. Todd said his employer was a third or fourth generation clockmaker and an artist clockmaker.

In 1978, the Smithsonian Institution was looking for someone specialised in clockmaking, so he moved his family to the United States and has been there ever since. “I love the finicky mechanism of the clocks, and the period I love the most is the 1500s and the 1600s,” Todd said.

He went on to explain that he loves the art and technology of clocks, and appreciates the work and creativity which went into their creation. He also said that Guyana has baby clocks compared to the ones he has serviced and restored.

This being their last official trip to Guyana, Todd said that he would miss Campsite’s pine tarts. “I am absolutely obsessed with Campsite’s pine tarts; the Clerk of Markets had promised to leave a trail of pine tarts up the stairs of the Stabroek Market clock so that I will come back to fix it whenever it needs servicing.”

Todd’s father was a toolmaker and his grandfather was a farrier. His tenure as Smithsonian’s Clockmaker and Museum Specialist will come to an end soon as he is preparing to retire.

David Shayt’s interest comes out of a different background. His father was a newspaperman, who, he said, wanted to have his finger on the pulse beat of the world. As such he lived in several places such as San Francisco, California and Alberta, Canada.

When he was old enough he joined the Marine Corps and then in 1977, he joined the Smithsonian Institution as a temporary staff member. He got his permanent post in 1978 in the History of Engineering Machinery.

Todd and Shayt have compiled volumes of information - records, interviews, photographs, maps, and detailed drawings - on Guyana, and are some day hoping to publish a book on their findings. This, they say, will justify the expenditure they have made. (Angela Osborne)