Talk:SS City of Peking

A fact from SS City of Peking appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 14 September 2008, and was viewed approximately 1,892 times (disclaimer) (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that City of Peking and City of Tokio were the largest ships ever built in the United States upon their completion in 1875?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2008/September.

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Tonnage v. displacement

It seems unlikely that the ships had displacements of 5800 tons.

This print shows “total capacity 5500 tons”. This 1878 book says the vessels “carry over 5,000 tons of freight”. (The book looks like a good contemporary source on the vessels.) If these two sources refer to weight (which is doubtful) then the displacements of these ships would be much higher than that figure.

Her tons burthen is listed in a number of ISTG pages at about 3129 (e.g. here) but one at 5079.62, which could have been confusion with gross tonnage.

There is a website dealing with the Spanish-American war which shows the figure as displacement, but that site is not authoritative and could just reflect the typical confusion between gross tonnage and displacement.

Perhaps the 5800 t figure is the rated gross tonnage.

Kablammo (talk) 13:38, 13 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Appendix A to the Swann book lists the gross tonnage of ships, but the necessary page is not visible on Google books. If you have the book please check about p. 239–40. Thanks. Kablammo (talk) 14:27, 13 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, I just checked that, my mistake, I've corrected the articles, thanks for pointing that out :)

I'm not actually sure what "tons burthen" is anyhow so I've just listed the tonnage as it is in Swann, as gross tons. Gatoclass (talk) 14:35, 13 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

GT is good. Look at Builder's Old Measurement for burthen. Kablammo (talk) 14:38, 13 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds like they are pretty much the same measurement. Apologies for the error, most of the ship articles I've done are US Navy vessels which usually give the displacement figure, I've done very few commercial vessels and just assumed if there was only one number given it must be displacement, but now you've reminded me I think cargo ships are usually measured in carrying capacity. Gatoclass (talk) 14:44, 13 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]