---
type: Person
title: Tomas Ferrick
description: Clockmaker who joined the Institute in 1958 and built the harbour tower
  clock in Port Ilvess.
tags:
- kelvarra
- the-institute
- port-ilvess
- clockmaking
- tidal-survey
resource: raw/a-life-at-the-water-line.md
timestamp: '2026-07-16T14:52:05Z'
citadel_version: 0.3.0
---

# Tomas Ferrick

Tomas Ferrick is a clockmaker who joined [The Institute](../organizations/the-institute.md) in 1958 and built the clock in the harbour tower of [Port Ilvess](../misc/port-ilvess.md), setting it going on 4 March 1963 after two years of work.[^s1][^s13]

## Joining the Institute

Ferrick was a harbour clockmaker's son, with burnt thumbs and — in [Maren Aldervane](../persons/maren-aldervane.md)'s words — "the steadiest hands I have ever watched work."[^s1] The Institute could not match the pay the mainland shipyards offered him, so Aldervane recruited him instead with the problem of closing the gap between the tide tables' predictions and the harbour's actual behavior.[^s1] He took the bench by the window and stayed there for the rest of his working life; the clock in the harbour tower is described as "his answer to the tide tables."[^s2]

Aldervane credits Ferrick, alongside the Institute's other staff, with having built the Institute in practice: "People say I built the Institute. I signed for it. Tomas and the others built it, at benches, slowly, while I argued with the council about coal."[^s2]

By the [Brann Tidal Survey](../projects/brann-tidal-survey.md)'s 1987 report, the clock — proved daily that season against the transit series — kept its rate within four seconds in the month, a performance the Survey says no instrument of its kind on the mainland approaches, surviving a summer in which its tower was twice struck by gulls and once, during a storm surge, by a fish.[^s4]

## Building the harbour tower clock (1961–1963)

Ferrick's own workshop day-book, kept at his bench by the window in the [Old Customs House](../misc/old-customs-house.md), records the clock's construction in detail.[^s5] He began work "in earnest" on 14 March 1961, after two years of the harbour board deferring the project; Aldervane came down at noon to look at the newly cleared bench and said only "good" before going back up — "as much ceremony," Ferrick notes, "as this house runs to."[^s5] That month he bought brass from the mainland founders at forty ferlings the hundredweight plus six ferlings carriage, and complained that the previous lot from the harbour chandler had "machined like cheese."[^s6]

By May 1961, Ferrick had framed the clock's central problem: not the tide itself, but an escapement that carried the tidal train without the train "telling the escapement about the weather" — and he was on his third sketch of a double-detent escapement to solve it.[^s7] That August he carried two aneroids up to the KSB for proving; both came back within tolerance, though the marine instrument "only just," and he marked it for the softer duty.[^s8]

Work continued through 1962. By February, dry runs of the double-detent mechanism through a full lunation dropped no beat, which earned an hour of Aldervane's silent watching before she pronounced that it "would do" — praise Ferrick calls "a citation from the Republic" — and he ordered the tower wheel castings for sixty-two ferlings.[^s10] In June he spent a day cutting the tidal gearing to the [Brann Tidal Survey](../projects/brann-tidal-survey.md)'s arithmetic, recutting fourteen leaves where the tooth count and his temper disagreed, and records Aldervane's remark that "a day-book that only remembers a man's victories is a calendar."[^s11]

By January 1963 the harbour-size clock stood complete on the bench, and Ferrick began proving it against the transit series for a full lunation, refusing the harbour board's weekly requests to shorten the proving.[^s12] He set the clock going in the harbour tower on 4 March 1963, with no speeches; Aldervane climbed the tower with him to watch the first change of the tidal train and said that "the tables promise and the harbour performs, and a clock that sides with the harbour was worth the wait," after which the two had tea at the counter.[^s13]

By 30 September 1963, the clock had run half a year against the transit series and that season's storms, its rate holding close enough that the Survey stopped writing him letters — "the highest honour the Republic has yet paid me," in Ferrick's words.[^s14] With the bench cleared again, his next commission was a house-size clock for the light on [Little Moriny](../misc/little-moriny.md).[^s14]

## Family

On 19 October 1961, after an equinoctial storm, Ferrick took his youngest daughter to the strand at Corrie Ness, where she filled her pockets with saltglass pebbles and found a small crab; at eight years old, he records, she already intended to set a good green-edged piece "in the lintel when she has a house."[^s9]

## The Moon landing

On the night in July 1974 that the Institute's staff heard news of the Moon landing over the wireless, Ferrick — "who did not waste words" — offered what Aldervane calls the only fitting remark of the evening: "Somebody had to prove the clocks for that."[^s3][^llm1]

## See also
- [Maren Aldervane](../persons/maren-aldervane.md)
- [The Institute](../organizations/the-institute.md)
- [Port Ilvess](../misc/port-ilvess.md)
- [Old Customs House](../misc/old-customs-house.md)
- [Brann Tidal Survey](../projects/brann-tidal-survey.md)
- [Little Moriny](../misc/little-moriny.md)

## Sources
[^s1]: [raw/a-life-at-the-water-line.md](../../raw/a-life-at-the-water-line.md), lines 42-45 — Ferrick recruited to the Institute, 1958 (ingested 2026-07-04)
[^s2]: [raw/a-life-at-the-water-line.md](../../raw/a-life-at-the-water-line.md), lines 45-48 — building the harbour tower clock (ingested 2026-07-04)
[^s3]: [raw/a-life-at-the-water-line.md](../../raw/a-life-at-the-water-line.md), lines 57-59 — remark on the night of the Moon landing (ingested 2026-07-04)
[^s4]: [raw/brann-tidal-survey-1987.md](../../raw/brann-tidal-survey-1987.md), lines 30-36 — the harbour tower tide clock's 1987 performance (ingested 2026-07-04)
[^s5]: [raw/ferrick-workshop-notes.md](../../raw/ferrick-workshop-notes.md), lines 6-9 — beginning work on the clock, 14 March 1961 (ingested 2026-07-04)
[^s6]: [raw/ferrick-workshop-notes.md](../../raw/ferrick-workshop-notes.md), lines 11-13 — brass purchase and cost, 29 March 1961 (ingested 2026-07-04)
[^s7]: [raw/ferrick-workshop-notes.md](../../raw/ferrick-workshop-notes.md), lines 15-18 — the escapement problem and the double-detent design, 11 May 1961 (ingested 2026-07-04)
[^s8]: [raw/ferrick-workshop-notes.md](../../raw/ferrick-workshop-notes.md), lines 20-23 — proving two aneroids at the KSB, 2 August 1961 (ingested 2026-07-04)
[^s9]: [raw/ferrick-workshop-notes.md](../../raw/ferrick-workshop-notes.md), lines 25-29 — the outing to Corrie Ness with his daughter, 19 October 1961 (ingested 2026-07-04)
[^s10]: [raw/ferrick-workshop-notes.md](../../raw/ferrick-workshop-notes.md), lines 31-35 — double-detent dry runs, Aldervane's praise, and ordering the tower wheel castings, 7 February 1962 (ingested 2026-07-04)
[^s11]: [raw/ferrick-workshop-notes.md](../../raw/ferrick-workshop-notes.md), lines 37-40 — cutting the tidal gearing to the Survey's arithmetic, 23 June 1962 (ingested 2026-07-04)
[^s12]: [raw/ferrick-workshop-notes.md](../../raw/ferrick-workshop-notes.md), lines 42-45 — the completed harbour-size clock and its proving, 15 January 1963 (ingested 2026-07-04)
[^s13]: [raw/ferrick-workshop-notes.md](../../raw/ferrick-workshop-notes.md), lines 47-52 — setting the clock going in the harbour tower, 4 March 1963 (ingested 2026-07-04)
[^s14]: [raw/ferrick-workshop-notes.md](../../raw/ferrick-workshop-notes.md), lines 54-58 — six months' proving and the next commission for Little Moriny, 30 September 1963 (ingested 2026-07-04)
[^llm1]: LLM - the memoir dates the Moon landing to July 1974; the real-world Apollo 11 Moon landing took place in July 1969. Preserved here as the source states it (added 2026-07-04)
