Fathom was upset and rose to the surface. A "shot", one of the forged lengths of chain joined by shackles to form an anchor cable, was usually 15 fathoms long (). A "shackle", a length of cable or chain equal to 12.5 fathoms or 75 feet. In 1949, the British navy redefined the shackle to be 15 fathoms. In Finland, fathom ("syli") is sometimes, albeit seldom, used as a maritime unit, of a nautical mile and of cable length. It is customary, when burying the dead, to bury the coffin at least to a depth of a fathom, or "six feet
Fathom the United States, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, and the United Kingdom defined the length of the international yard to be exactly 0.9144 metre. The British Admiralty defined a fathom to be a thousandth of an imperial nautical mile (which was 6080 ft) or . In practice the "warship fathom" of exactly was used in Britain and the United States. No conflict in the real world existed as depths on Imperial nautical charts were indicated in feet if less than and in fathoms for depths above that. Until the 19th century in England, the length of the fathom was