Background
In the UK, merchant sailing vessels were historically measured using Builder's Old Measurement to measure tonnage and taxed according. The word 'ton' and hence 'tonnage' originates from the word 'tun' which is a measure of volume equivalent to the size of a barrel which could contain 252 gallons of wine. Due to the long history of measuring or rating merchant sailing ships by their tonnage so tonnage was naturally also used to measure or rate a sailing yacht. Accurately measuring of the internal volume of a sailing vessel was virtually impossible due to the continually changing curvature of a ship's hull from the bow to the stern. So a set of distances at points on the hull was defined to be measured and entered into a formula which then defined the tonnage and hence the taxes to be paid to the government of the day. As each ship was measured on the same basis it did not matter that the tonnage measurement was not a 100% accurate measure of volume as all vessels were measured on the same basis which led to an equitable basis of allocating tax.
Read more about this topic: International Rule (sailing)
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