Why sailors use a knot in a rope to measre depth?
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Answer:
Its not one knot every 6 feet, but 1 or 2 or 3 knots every 6 feet. Then, you can tell by the feel of how many knots there are, how deep the water is. If you only had 1 knot every 6 feet, you would need to count them all to know. With a different number of knots every 6 feet, you can tell quickly without needing to retrieve all the rope.
Calvin at Yahoo! Answers Visit the source
Other answers
The knot is a unit of speed, not to measure depth, equal to one nautical mile per hour, a vessel travelling at 1 knot along a meridian travels one minute of geographic latitude in one hour. Mariners first used the term "knot" denoting the measure of how many knots in a special line paid out in a given time, using the chip log.
Selena
The rope they used didn't have just one knot in it, it had one knot every 6 feet. They would lower this rope, and count how many knots before they reached the bottom. 6 feet is called a "fathom".
John Adriaan
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