Talk:Taffrail

Meaning was changing through time

By br-67-admiralty-manual-of-seamanship-1995-05-01.pdf (page 25, Knot: explanation of initial meaning of unit for velocity of the ship: the term taffrail was still used later (there is probably some article about pitot-tube measuring of speed on ships boats and ships, but I didn't search when piece of wood/log, measured knotted rope and timer method was superseded and by what exactly), but taffrail then seem to have meant the rail on the stern of any ship (including when poop decks and/or forecastles were no more used or needed).

Text might benefit from rephrase that initially (probably, I didn't check that) taffrail meant what is now written in this article now (2026), but later meant any railing on the deck at the extreme aft point of any ship, where speed of the ship was measured with that method.

The cited work is not quite recent (I saw no date of publication, but it supersedes previous documents from up to 1984), but covers a lot of general info related to British naval vocabulary and standards. Units in use can be a bit confusing at times (tonne, meaning 1000 kg, is also used as measure of force - e.g. minimum breaking force for ropes, equivalent to about 1000 daN). Many traditional (now obsolete) units are (I think both tersely and exhaustively) explained and this might be an excellent source for citations in articles about several historical (mostly nautical) measuring units. And of course, it can be source of citations about a lot of nautical terms.

I can't find time at least to next late fall to do that rephrase properly, so I leave this notice - if anyone does that before I can (s)he's very welcome. Marjan Tomki SI (talk) 00:25, 28 March 2026 (UTC)