Fathoms to Meters (ftm to m)

1 fathom equals 1.8288 meters exactly.

1 fathom = 1.8288 meters

How to convert fathoms to meters

To convert fathoms to meters, multiply the number of fathoms by 1.8288. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply meters by 0.5468066492 (rounded).

meters = fathoms × 1.8288

Example: 10 fathoms = 18.288 meters.

About these units

Fathom (ftm)

NauticalTraditional unit (still used in some regions)

6 feet (1.8288 m), traditionally the span of a man's outstretched arms. Still used for water depth on nautical charts in some countries.

Old English fæðm meant a pair of outstretched arms, and the word gave English its fathom. That is the origin of the measure: the span between the fingertips of a man with his arms spread wide, roughly the height of a person. Because bodies differ, the fathom was not fixed for centuries. Merchant ships are recorded as using about five and a half feet, and fishing boats five or seven, until the length was settled at six feet in the nineteenth century.

Sailors counted in fathoms because a hand sounding line carried marks at fathom intervals, so the depth could be read off when the weight touched bottom. Water shallower than 100 fathoms was said to be in soundings. Anchor chain and fishing line were also sold and counted in fathoms. The figure used here is exactly six feet, or 1.8288 m, which makes two yards one fathom. Most charts today show metres, though some national charts still print fathoms.

1 fathom = 1.8288 meters (exactly).

Sources: Wikipedia: Fathom; NIST SP 811, Appendix B.8 (length conversion factors)

Meter (m)

Metric (SI)Current unit

The SI base unit of length. Since 1983 it is defined as the distance light travels in a vacuum in 1/299,792,458 of a second.

Meter comes from the Greek metron, a measure. In 1791 the French National Assembly defined it as one ten-millionth of the distance from the equator to the North Pole along a great circle through Paris, after rejecting the length of a seconds pendulum because that length changes with local gravity. The surveyors Delambre and Méchain measured the meridian arc, and in 1799 a platinum bar known as the Mètre des Archives became the physical standard. NIST notes that this Earth-based meter turned out to be about 0.2 mm shorter than the true pole-to-equator fraction it was meant to represent.

The 1875 Treaty of the Meter created the CGPM and the BIPM to look after common standards, and in 1889 a platinum-iridium prototype bar took over; the original is still kept at the BIPM. In 1960 the meter was tied to 1,650,763.73 wavelengths of an orange-red krypton-86 line, and in 1983 to the speed of light, which made length a quantity derived from the time standard. The 2018 revision reworded that definition without changing the meter's size. NIST offers a handy yardstick for scale: a pace, meaning two steps, is roughly a meter or a yard.

The meter is the reference unit for length on this site.

Sources: BIPM: history of the metre; NIST: the meter and the SI redefinition; Wikipedia: Metre

Related conversions

See all length units.