Pouring anchor Kenter shackle lead plug - GIF

[mklotz]

Is there anything wrong with a nautical mile?
It seems more sensible than - let's say - meter.

The nautical mile is useful because it very closely matches the length of one arc minute on a great circle of the earth. That makes it useful for anyone who must navigate on earth. Like most inferial units, it makes some sense where it's used but it should not be allowed to become part of an intelligent measurement system. Fortunately, it hasn't; one seldom encounters it outside the navigation arena.

My distaste is not based on the unit per se, but on the inconsistent relations between units in inferial systems. The lack of any order to the system means that every unit-to-unit relation must be learned separately and remembered. In an intelligently organized system, e.g. metric, the name of the unit tells you how it's related to all the other units of that class.

Three nautical miles to a league, six feet to a fathom, ninety feet to a shot... It's easy to convince oneself that inferial systems were designed to make learning and using difficult so the old-timers could lord their knowledge over newcomers.