From what I know the vast majority of nautical travel is measured in knots. It just feels a little ancient for this world of technology. Wether it’s a ship or amphibious craft the speed is always knots. We have pretty reliable GPS and satellite nav nowadays even to the point you can buy a GPS speedometer for less than $50 for your car. I completely understand the “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” philosophy but surely it would make life just that little bit easier for sailors and captains to have their speed in MPH/KPH?
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Why would it make their life easier in MPH/KPH?
Knots is just a measure of speed in nautical miles per hours. So the real question here is why nautical miles. Well you see on land you can measure a distance, you put a tape on the ground and measure. But on water you can’t do that. But what you can do is have instrument that measure your latitude. 1 minute of latitude equal 1 nautical miles.
So yes ok now you can use GPS to calculate your speed in whatever you want, but what if the GPS doesn’t work? Now your gonna need to calculate your stuff using manual equipment and it’s gonna give you an amount of nautical miles. Yes ok for a multi million dollar ship, you might have back up, but most ship are small. Then you need to ask yourself, would it make sense to change everything from nautical miles to miles? All the textbook, all the instrument, all the charts and map. Everything?
And for what? What improvement to their life will all that effort and risk bring to sailors?
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