Yards to Nautical Leagues (yd to nlea)

1 yard equals 0.0001645788337 nautical leagues (rounded).

1 yard = 0.0001645788337 nautical leagues

How to convert yards to nautical leagues

To convert yards to nautical leagues, multiply the number of yards by 0.0001645788337. The factor is rounded to 10 significant digits. To go the other way, multiply nautical leagues by 6,076.115486 (rounded).

nautical leagues = yards × 0.0001645788337

Example: 10 yards = 0.001645788337 nautical leagues.

About these units

Yard (yd)

US & ImperialCurrent unit

3 feet or 36 inches, exactly 0.9144 meters. Used for sports fields, fabric and short distances in the US and UK.

Yard descends from the Old English gerd or gyrd, meaning a branch, stave or measuring rod. It first appears in the late seventh-century laws of Ine of Wessex, though there it names a tax unit, the yardland. Around 959 to 963 King Edgar ordered that the measure held at Winchester be used throughout his realm, the earliest record of a prototype. A story that Henry I fixed the yard as the distance from his nose to his thumb is later folklore, and the true origin, whether pace, cubit or waist, remains speculative.

Britain defined the Imperial Standard Yard in 1824 as the distance between two marks on a brass rod at 62 degrees Fahrenheit. A fire in 1834 damaged the standard, a replacement was made in 1845, and the Weights and Measures Act 1855 recognized it. The 1959 international agreement then fixed the yard at exactly 0.9144 meter. Today it measures American and Canadian football fields, association football pitches and cricket pitches, appears on UK road signs for short distances, and is still used to sell fabric in the US and UK.

1 yard = 0.9144 meters (exactly).

Sources: Wikipedia: Yard; Wikipedia: Inch; NIST Guide to the SI, Appendix B.8: conversion factors

Nautical League (nlea)

NauticalHistorical unit (no longer in standard use)

Three nautical miles (5.556 km). Used at sea; the title of Jules Verne's novel counts distance in these.

Jules Verne's 1870 novel title promises twenty thousand leagues beneath the sea, a number that would circle the planet several times over, and the unit behind it is worth unpacking. Leagues descend from a Celtic measure that Rome took over as the leuga, supposedly about what a person could walk in an hour. Seafaring nations later adapted the word to the water, where distance was reckoned from the sea rather than from the road.

At sea, English usage made a league three nautical miles. With the international nautical mile fixed at exactly 1,852 m by a hydrographic conference at Monaco in 1929, that gives 5,556 m, the figure used here, or 5.556 km. It equals thirty cables and covers three minutes of latitude. Earlier national nautical miles differed a little, and Portugal and Spain defined maritime leagues from fractions of a degree of meridian, so values near 5.5 to 6.2 km turn up in older texts. Verne's league was a French unit, a metric one of 4,000 m having been legal in France from 1812 to 1840, and the nautical league is now only historical.

1 nautical league = 5,556 meters (exactly).

Sources: Wikipedia: League (unit); Wikipedia: Nautical mile

Related conversions

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