Why is boat speed measured in knots?

Why is the speed of a boat in knots?

Buoy and yacht have odd spellings because English is a creole, a language of borrowed words, the plunder of Empire. With those two, it is from the Dutch who were sea-going themselves. 

But why is there a k in knots?

The h in ghost is attributed to the typesetters that William Caxton brought over from Flanders to operate his newly acquired printing press. A man from Ghent sees nothing superfluous in the h. Did the k in knots seep into English along the same path?

If you were selling me a piece of wood two feet and six inches long, I would put it on the ground, place one foot, heel-to-toe, against my other foot. With my thumbs I’d measure how many thumb widths were left after the two feet. Hand size is relevant only to horses.

There would inevitably ensue a period of haggling over length and cost. I would accuse you of cheating me because your feet are small compared to my large feet. This would be followed by comparison of our inch-wide thumbs – but that’s just spare change.

If it’s simply a piece of wood and a few pieces of copper then measurement and price are not crucial. When there are hundreds of pieces involving payment in silver and gold it becomes more important.

A surveyor used to carry a chain in order to measure a chain in distance. 

A surveyor who measures your backyard with twine and announces that it is “roughly” a chain deep will probably not get a recommendation to your neighbour or a call back. 

Nevertheless, inexact science, having a fair idea of measurement, can sometimes be useful.

The h in ghost is attributed to the typesetters that William Caxton brought over from Flanders to operate his newly acquired printing press

If you attach a metal weight to a length of rope and drop it over the side of a boat, it can be lowered until the rope slackens as the weight hits the sea bed. The next task is to lift the weight back up, extending both arms to the full and counting the number of times you have to do this until the weight reappears at the water surface. A fathom is the length of two spread arms.

While this is inexact – I hear you moaning about getting the little guy to do this so it seems deeper than it truly is – all you need to know is that the water is deeper than the boat. If it’s not, then you already knew that. The boat has run aground.

But if you must quibble, then you can double-check by getting the big guy to measure the fathoms.

I believe I have reverse-engineered an explanation to the k in knots. I read a novel, one of the many I shall not otherwise recommend, in which the idea was not explained but simply alluded to.

You are at sea. The sails are full and there is no land in sight to get your bearings. How fast are you travelling?

You take a piece of wood attached to a length of rope. As you drop it into the water it appears to float away. In fact, it is you who are floating away. 

You count a prescribed number of seconds, “one thousand…two thousand…” and pull the rope in counting the knots that you have tied in the rope.

Hopefully, it is a large number because man does not live by sauerkraut, bully beef and rum alone and the sooner we get there the sooner we can get some decent food.

You are at sea. The sails are full and there is no land in sight to get your bearings. How fast are you travelling?

My intimate companion, prompted by this rumination, enquired as to the meaning of leagues. Everyone knows that there are twenty thousand of them and they occur under the sea but how far is it?

Against my natural inclination, I looked it up. I got an answer from the Wikipedia. They can be relied upon not to try to sell you something.

There is a comprehensive table which answers the question by posing others. Where are you and when are you? While a league varies in different countries and at different times, it seems to be an idea that the Romans plundered from the Celts. Digging deeper into further uncertainty – a league was the distance you walked in an hour. That’s a useful measure for a marching army.

I’m a great believer in half truths. I aspire to be cognizant and judgemental. People’s opinions are far more telling than the truth. Isn’t ‘reality’ subjective anyway? Schrodinger’s cat was only there because you opened the door.

Avoirdupois is the list that was once on the back of the primary school exercise books which gave comparison between measurement systems – miles to kilometres to chains to links to perches.

Why was it called Avoirdupois? To Have Some Peas?

If somebody was selling you a bag of dried peas, would you count them individually or simply weigh the bag and briefly haggle over the price?

I may well be correct. 

Words sometimes mean exactly what they say.