The Use of Benchmarks in the Popular Reporting of Commercial Shipping: Is the Titanic an appropriate measure to convey the size of a modern ship?

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Acknowledgements

With thanks to Oliver White for his help in applying Simpson's rules to the estimate of the volume of the Swiss Re headquarters building.

Notes

¹ The Today Programme, BBC Radio 4, 16 Sep. 2013.

² Newsround, BBC1 Television, 16 Sep. 2013.

³ Ludvigsen, Italian racing red.

⁴ Oxford English Dictionary ‘tonnage’.

⁵ MacGregor, The Tea Clippers.

⁶ Lack of experience of launching a ship of this size meant that it was difficult and the launching operation took three months.

⁷ Lavery, Ship.

⁸ Falkus, The Blue Funnel Legend.

⁹ Blake, Titanic: A passenger's guide.

¹⁰ Ibid.

¹¹ Dunn, Passenger Liners.

¹² All tonnages in the modern era are taken from Sea-Web, a database of the registered particulars of all merchant ships: www.sea-web.com

¹³ This vessel had four name changes over its life, subsequently called Happy Giant, Jahre Viking, Knock Nevis and Mont.

¹⁴ The Measure of Things website: www.bluebullprojects.com/measureofthings

¹⁵ Beranek, Music, Acoustics and Architecture.

¹⁶ Abel and Jenkins, Norman Foster