Quote:
Originally Posted by Johnny1A.2
It can also be a measure of volume.
This is one of those things that can be really confusing, words don't always mean what they usually mean when talking about sea vessels.
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Or vice versa. The shipping usage is of course original, and started out as a volume measure - how many wine tuns you could fit in the holds, which determined how much the government charged you in taxes. The weight definition is the later add on.
But yeah, it's confusing, that's because it is *still* a set of legal terms that determine things like taxes and tarrifs and usage or transit fees - so it's subject to the usual complexity of any tax code. And of course motivates people to *deliberately* do things to make the value unrelated to any number you might actually be interested in, so they can pay lower fees on the same amount of whatever the useful quantity you care about they actually have.