The laws of distance, and hence speed, are slightly different on the ocean than on land. Mariners also use their own vocabulary when measuring the two. To begin, a mile on the ocean — called a ...

Knot: A unit of speed in the nautical system, a knot is one nautical mile per hour. One knot is equal to 1.1508 statute miles per hour (the most commonly used unit of speed in the United States).

Q: On land we measure wind speed in miles per hour. On sea we measure it in knots. Why the difference? Driving them batty: My recent trivia question about the fastest flying creature on Earth prompted ...

How fast you’re going while out floating on the big blue can be notoriously tricky to judge if you’re just eyeballing it. One method used to get around this issue was introduced in the sixteenth ...

Mariners used to toss a wooden log overboard, and while its line spooled out, they would count each of the knots that passed through their hands. After 28 seconds, they recorded their boat’s speed in ...