[tz] TIme in Belize

[Paul Eggert]

On 11/7/20 2:24 PM, Steve Allen wrote:
> Ships with significant draft cannot approach Belize City, and it is
> plausible that the conventional time for Belize was set for a
> longitude off shore where the ships could anchor as contrasted
> with any point on the land itself.

Yes, I agree that this is a plausible explanation, one that I also thought of. 
The question, though, is whether there was an official time in Belize city 
before 1912-04-01.

> The 1912 record for the change in the time should be believed
> whether or not it corresponds to a longitude of a known place.

Also agreed, if it were a 1912 record but it's not; it's dated 1927, and says 
that local time was -06 from 1912 on, which means it doesn't address the issue 
at hand.

Here's what the cited 1927 source says:

"WHEREAS since the first day of April One thousand nine hundred and twelve the 
Standard Time adopted and observed in the Colony has been seven minutes, 
seventeen and twenty-seven hundredths seconds (7′ 17″.27) later than the local 
mean time at Belize and six hours later than Greenwich mean time :"

This says nothing about civil time observed in Belize city *before* 1912; it's 
only an old-fashioned way to specify civil time in Belize *after* 1912.

Possibly a Belize Mean Time was specified sometime before 1912, which 
established -05:52:42.73 as civil time throughout the city or even the colony. 
In that case, we could add a line switching from LMT to this time. We would need 
a source for this, though.