Stuff I Didn't Know About

From this morning's Press Telegram, a really interesting letter-to-the-editor (really interesting if you're me; if you're not me, perhaps not so much):

The word "ton" or "tonnage," as used throughout the cruise industry, does not refer to the weight of a ship, but to the volume of all of its enclosed spaces such as the staterooms, dining facilities, pool areas, lobby, etc. In ship parlance a "ton," or more properly a "gross register ton" (GRT) is equal to 100 cubic feet, so to say that the Queen Mary "weighs" 81,237 tons would be like saying that one lives in a 1,500-ton house.

A ship's actual weight is called "displacement," which is about as close as you can get in determining what something as large as a building tips the scales at. Coincidentally, Queen Mary's gross register tonnage (volume) and its displacement (weight) are nearly identical at 81,000 tons-plus. But that's not the case for most modern cruise ships such as Royal Caribbean's Oasis and Allure of the Seas, currently the largest cruise ships in the world in both GRT (225,282) and displacement (approximately 100,000 tons, about the same as a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier).

Also, contrary to what was reported in the Press-Telegram, Queen Mary is 1,019 feet long overall, not 965 feet, which is essentially the ship's length at its waterline. Think of it as an automobile that has a 116-inch wheelbase, but is actually 193 inches long.

Who knew? Thanks to "Joe Ruszkiewicz, Seal Beach CA" now you and I do.