Being just a babe in the woods when it came to such terminology, I was puzzled for some distance into the book, until I realized that the folks who CARED about all this shipping getting to it's destination, on either side, categorized it in tons. Only in tons!
Any given sea-going ship was an "xxxxx ton" ship. Not the "Caribbean Floater," nor the "Atlantic Scourge," but the such-and-such American or Panamanian freighter of xxxxx tons, and so on. Lots of ways of categorizing the ships, but in reports thruout the maritime world it was reported in tons of shipping destroyed, sunk forever... little else mattered.
Really interesting reading, once you got into the terminology and such.
I guess liberals were only motes in their parent's eyes back then, because absolutely no-one complained about the jillions of gallons of fuel oil released onto the surface of the North or mid-Atlantic when each ship was sunk!
Not one!
I read about hundreds of other laments, but none about spilled oil. Hmmm.
keith whaley
Graywolf wrote:
> That only is so if the jets are pretty much full. Since they fly on a
> schedule they will fly even if they only have 20-30 passengers on board.
> Then the efficiency is very low. The same with big trucks. Loaded they
> are quite efficient (ton-miles/gallon) empty they are a terrible waste
> of resources. However a passenger car with only a driver in it is fully
> 1/4 as efficient (passenger-miles/gallon) as it is with a family of 4 in
> it.
>
> The point I am trying to make is, of course, the relative efficiency of
> large vehicles varies much more with load than it does in smaller vehicles.
> Steve Desjardins wrote: > >> I dispute your disputation. ;-) I saw a Scientific American article >> about transportation a few years ago, and Jet transports are much more >> efficient than any gas powered ground vehicles because they can move >> such enormous amounts of cargo. Of course, ships are not counted here, >> which are even better. >> >> >> Steven Desjardins
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