MRC_Hans
Penultimate Amazing
- Joined
- Aug 28, 2002
- Messages
- 24,961
On large wooden ships: The Danish frigate "Jylland" is 71 meters long, and has a displacement of 2,456 tons. She is built completely in wood, was launched in 1860, and saw active service with the Danish Navy till 1892 (a quite normal active life-span for a wooden ship). She was rigged as a 3 mast full ship, an had a 400hp steam engine driving a retractable propeller.
The ship still exists as a museum ship, although it has been in dry-dock since 1984 (having been afloat for 124 consecutive years!).''
The Jylland was built based on centuries of experience building wooden ships and she and her contemporaries represent the apex (and end) of a long era of refining and development, over a whole continent.
The idea that a peasant family with no knowledge of ships, even provided with divine blueprints, should manage to build a ship more than twice the size, using a poorer quality of wood than the oak which went into the Jylland, and sail it, even just drifting with wind and current, is absurd. Add to this the task of tending to thousands of animals, and it isn't even good fiction any longer.
On a planet-wide open ocean, even a ship the size of The Ark would work heavily in the giant swell that would range unhindered across the globe, and months of this would put a heavy strain even on a steel hull. And, of course, this would add to the already overwhelming task of tending to the 'passengers', many of which would be perpetually sea-sick and a constant state of terror.
Frankly, the whole idea is completely silly: If God wanted a selected group to survive a flood, and he had to aid them in boat-building and guide all the animals to and from the boat anyways, then why not just guide them all to a high spot and leave that unflooded? Seems this god, while omnipotent, is a remarkably poor problem-solver.
Hans
The ship still exists as a museum ship, although it has been in dry-dock since 1984 (having been afloat for 124 consecutive years!).''
The Jylland was built based on centuries of experience building wooden ships and she and her contemporaries represent the apex (and end) of a long era of refining and development, over a whole continent.
The idea that a peasant family with no knowledge of ships, even provided with divine blueprints, should manage to build a ship more than twice the size, using a poorer quality of wood than the oak which went into the Jylland, and sail it, even just drifting with wind and current, is absurd. Add to this the task of tending to thousands of animals, and it isn't even good fiction any longer.
On a planet-wide open ocean, even a ship the size of The Ark would work heavily in the giant swell that would range unhindered across the globe, and months of this would put a heavy strain even on a steel hull. And, of course, this would add to the already overwhelming task of tending to the 'passengers', many of which would be perpetually sea-sick and a constant state of terror.
Frankly, the whole idea is completely silly: If God wanted a selected group to survive a flood, and he had to aid them in boat-building and guide all the animals to and from the boat anyways, then why not just guide them all to a high spot and leave that unflooded? Seems this god, while omnipotent, is a remarkably poor problem-solver.
Hans
Last edited:
.