It’s clear the Ark’s dimensions weren’t designed for ocean travel. However they are the kind of dimensions found in large scale ANE river barges, such as the massive barges built by Hatshepsut for transporting obelisks. So the Ark was clearly designed for inland use in a local flood.
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@Socratic.Fanatic Unfortunately, I got my words mixed up as I was trying to get out of the door this morning. The concept I was trying to get at is called ‘hogging.’ A wooden keeled ship is more buoyant in the center than either the bow or stern thus there tends to bend at the middle. As I do a little research, it appears that 300 ft is the absolute maximum length for a wooden ship and that needs iron supports, leaks like a sieve, and visibly undulates in the open sea.
https://ncse.com/cej/4/1/impossible-voyage-noahs-ark
In short, the Ark as built by Ken Ham, should snap in half shortly after launching…
EDIT: I look forward to your article if you care to share it here at some point in the future.
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I’m not sure how you come to these lengthy conclusions. Yes… there are some things that critics fill in for themselves, and you point out that these deductions are not explicitly stated in the Bible. But that doesn’t mean the deductions are meaningless or lacking in sensibility.
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If it was intended to be understood as a REGIONAL flood … why did it take so long for the released birds to find land?
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If it was intended to be understood as a REGIONAL flood … why would there have to be so many animals on the ark?
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… flood waters that reached even the lowlands of the Ararat range would still be more than a regional flood… we are talking highlands that are at least a third of a mile high.
The whole logic of the Flood is defeated if it is INTENDED to be understood as a REGIONAL flood.
They wouldn’t have been floating for a year… they woudlnt’ have needed any extra animals - - just what they needed for a couple of weeks of food…
And the birds would have found land practically immediately.
[quote=“jlock, post:22, topic:5461”]
The concept I was trying to get at is called ‘hogging.’ A wooden keeled ship is more buoyant in the center than either the bow or stern thus there tends to bend at the middle.[/quote]
Hogging was solved by Ancient Near East shipbuilders through the use of end to end torsion cables. In this image of Hatshepsut’s super-barge for transporting obelisks, you can see the torsion cables being supported above the hull. They were twisted at both ends with massive levers, to create an immense tension which pulled the prow and stern towards each other, counter-acting the forces of hogging.
Of course this worked well for large inland barges; it was not designed as a solution for super-large ocean going vessels. A barge is not subject to the same stresses as a sailing ship. It does not have to bear the weight of sails and rigging, and it is not subject to hull stresses caused by the wind bending the masts. The Ark did not have to carry the tremendous weight of cannon which burdened the wooden ships with which it is often compared, and nor did it have to deal with the weight and stresses of a steam engine or steam bilge pumps. In addition, the Ark was not a sea or ocean going vessel, it stayed within the Mesopotamian flood plain.
This is a common claim, resulting from the fact that Western shipbuilders never reached such sizes without using iron supports. But Western shipbuilders used very different building techniques to those used in the Ancient Near East. Ships built in the Early and Middle Bronze Age, including mortise and tenon joinery and a “hull first” construction method, rather than the “frame first” construction method used by later Western maritime engineers. The “frame first” construction method is inherently weak when building ships this size. Additionally, Western shipbuilders did not use tension cables (“hogging trusses”).
Yes it’s true that the largest wooden ships of the modern era, such as Appomattox, were very unstable. Measuring 97.2 metres long (319 feet), with a beam of 12.8 metres (42 feet), the Appomattox had to be reinforced with steel bracing just to stay together, and pumped continuously by steam bilge pumps in order to battle constant leaking as stresses on the hull caused the timbers to separate. However, the Appomattox was designed completely differently to the Ark, being a steam powered ship not a barge. It was also subjected to other stresses caused not only by a cargo load but also by having to tow a large unpowered barge behind it.
The unpowered barge which was towed by the Appomattox is a better comparison with the Ark. Like the Ark it was made entirely of wood, carrying no steel bracing. Like the Ark it was not powered either by steam or sail. Like the Ark it was built as a barge. Not only this, but its dimension are even larger than those of the Appomattox, at 102.4 metres long (336 feet), with a beam of 14 metres (46 feet).
Unlike the Appomattox, the Santiago did not suffer from leaking problems. It served on the Great Lakes as a towed barge for almost 20 years (1899-1918), before finally being swamped in a gale. This wooden ship (though not as large as the Ark), was larger than the Appomattox which towed it, but suffered from none of the structural defects and had a service history over twice as long as that of the Appomattox, despite serving on the Great Lakes, notorious for their storm conditions and unpredictable waters. This is a far more accurate comparison to draw with the Ark, and demonstrates that wooden barges over 300 feet long are practical.
As if that wasn’t enough, we have reliable historical evidence that wooden ships over 300 feet long were built before the modern era, using mortise and tenon joinery, tension cables (‘hogging trusses’), and bulkheads or internal bracing, such as transverse lashing and lateral or longitudinal strength beams.
A large cargo barge was built for Caligula, measuring 104 metres long (about 341 feet), and 20.3 metres wide (66 feet), to transport an obelisk from Egypt to Rome. Gregory Aldrete’s ”Daily Life in the Roman City: Rome, Pompeii, and Ostia’ (2004), says of this ship ‘Atop one of these was erected a lighthouse that used as its foundation the giant ship that had been built to transport the obelisk of Heliopolis from Egypt to Rome under the reign of Caligula’ (page 206).
The Greek warships described by Memnon and Ptolemy used mortise and tenon joinery with hogging trusses, to provide strength to the hull, and the Romans used the same technique to construct their super barges. Egyptian tomb reliefs as early as Dynasty IV (2,613-2,494 BC), show tension trusses being used, and they are known to predate this era.
Egyptian inscriptions as early as the reign of Khufu I (2,589-2,566 BC), show ships built with internal bracing techniques such as lateral and longitudinal strength beams, and transverse lashing. Longitudinal strength bulkheads are found in the Egyptian Middle Kingdom era (between 1,991 BC and 1,648 BC), showing that this technology was used from a very early date in the Ancient Near East.
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@Jonathan_Burke Thanks for the additional info! First off, [quote=“Jonathan_Burke, post:24, topic:5461”]
the Ark was not a sea or ocean going vessel, it stayed within the Mesopotamian flood plain.
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This was the point I was getting at. Architectural problems abound when considering Noah’s flood in the most literal sense and I’m highly skeptical that Ham’s Ark could withstand the open ocean for 40 days.
We’re still talking about a vessel well over 100 feet longer than the Santiago. This isn’t meant as a criticism, merely pointing out the extent of a major problem Even if he used all of those techniques, its not like Noah could have just scaled them up to a larger size. The forces acting on the keel of a 450 ft. long wooden ship stagger the mind. Thanks again!
Jim
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Yes Ham’s Ark is imaginary in pretty much every way. He doesn’t even know what shape it should be, and he has no clue what features it should have. He made it look more Greek than anything else.
You’re welcome. I think the Ark was closer to 425 feet, but at this length what’s a dozen feet here or there? Hatshepsut built a super-barge which is estimated at 95-140 metres long (311-459 feet), and 32 metres wide (104 feet). A large contemporary Egyptian relief depicts the barge in the process of carrying two obelisks end to end. We have one of the obelisks which survived, so we know it’s length and we can calculate that to carry both of then end to end the ship would have been over 400 feet long. Even conservative estimates made on the assumption that the obelisks were carried side by side (which is a problem because no Egyptian records show any obelisk pairs ever being carried this way), rather than end to end in the typical manner (as the contemporary relief actually depicts), have ranged between 84 and 95 metres (Björn Landström, ‘Ships Of The Pharoahs’, 1970). Oh, and in the ANE they did something with the keel which was different to Western construction methods, but I can’t remember what it was now. I do know that mortise and tenon joinery and hull first construction method used in the ANE ensured the vertical forces actually compressed the hull planks together, instead of forcing them apart as in the Western method.
The Tessarakonteres was a timber warship built for Ptolemy IV (around 200 BC), which was 128 metres long (about 420 feet). It is described by the Roman historian Plutarch (‘Life of Demetrius’, chapter 43, sections 5-6), and is recognized as a historical vessel by authorities such as Lionel Casson, ‘Ships and Seafaring in Ancient Times’ (1994), and ‘Ships and Seamanship in the Ancient World’ (1995).
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The nautical factors are certainly fun to explore. I tend to focus on the mundane: Humidity at sea and mold growth along with basic sanitation is an enormous air quality and poisonous environment problem. How does fresh air clear out stifling atmosphere of ammonia, carbon dioxide, and very high humidity of a vessel baking in the sun when one can’t simply open windows to let the air flow through?
Imagine wooden floors without daily fresh layers of straw or other disposable vegetative material that can absorb animal waste and urine and get replaced before it rots through the floor. (Of course, one would still need to be scrubbing down wood surfaces with bleach constantly. Anybody from a farm background who has ever kept a barn in operation knows what I’m talking about.)
Here again it is obvious why a steady dose of miracles has always been the best explanation: The animals are divinely called to their individual stalls. Upon reaching them they compliantly position themselves for efficient storage. (A densely packed shelf, rack, and pin system perhaps?) They fall into deep hibernation so that no food, no water, and barely any oxygen is needed for over a year. How is this possible? Just as Young Earth Creationists have often done when hit by realities like dendrochronology or coral reef growth rates, they can simply cherry pick some animal species in some atypical environment which has amazing capabilities. So in this case they would select as their “norm” some animal species which can go into extreme stasis-hibernation for the long term—and then pretend that that ability is transferable to all animals. Trust me: this kind of thinking is extremely common within YEC apologia. ("If bears can hibernate for the winter, why can’t all other animals basically go ‘dead’ for a year, especially if God is doing lots of miraculous things at the time.)
Yeah, I suppose I’m lazy. Solving all potential problems via miracles on demand works for me!
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Considering that Ken Ham likes to resort to “The pre-flood world was not technologically primitive like we imagine.”, it is not hard to spin from there: They had metal workers (see Tubal-cain) and so they could make copper wire and thereby electric motors. So they probably had advanced air circulation systems and even conveyer belts and elevators for movements of people, animals, and food. The Pipe-Fitters Local 325 bid on the plumbing and the solar-powered condensers generated electricity as well delivered fresh water throughout the vessel.
And just as the Flood can be supplemented by a convenient Noahic Ice Age (says Ham), why couldn’t Noah build a fleet of supply ships and service vessels that support the ark—much like the tenders around an aircraft carrier. Noah has three sons with three wives, so they can surely pilot the tender vessels to address the problems of a very long wooden vessel, imagine a series of independent compartments, each attached to modular compartments on each side, and freely able to rotate along several axis. This could relieve torque and vector forces in rough water. After all, the Genesis instructions are extremely ambiguous!
Yet, don’t think about it too deeply. Any technical problem can always be solved by a miracle.
Of course, you could also just imagine that it is a parable meant to communicate particular central truths!
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I think you mean “Turbine-Cain”, as he was more commonly known.
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Some believers really do think that mankind lost a lot of dazzling technology in the flood. I’m not sure how they hid it all, though.
Don’t forget Noah’s aircraft carriers.
I like the description in this CT write up of the on-board library and blacksmith shop. Really? And we are the ones who take unwarranted liberties with the biblical text?
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Oh, yes. They probably also had spaceflight back then.
And yet, despite all of the advanced technology, they hadn’t yet invented synthetic fabrics and styles of clothes which were cooler, easier to wash, and more all-around practical. And they were still stuck with inefficient pottery for storage purposes. Why weren’t they making plastic polymers as a byproduct of the petroleum that there were using for the pitch? (Of course, YECs go both ways on whether the pitch was an petroleum product or a tree resin.)
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I was just watching a video by Ken Ham talking about his zoo on the Ark grounds. Not inside the ark, where people would smell the animals and be disinclined to dine and shop.(Did you know that buck goats urinate on themselves to attract mates?)
Anyway, it seems the zoo has has 5 full-time zoo professionals as well as 24 part-time people, most of them vet techs (animal nurses) on staff. And they have veterinarians on call.
My head just imploded.
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Yes. But the goats were all willing to sign the AIG doctrinal statement—so Ken Ham hired them despite their alternative lifestyles. (In Kentucky, that actually qualifies as affirmative action in hiring.)
(A much bigger issue was settled when the goats all contractually agreed to only use the restroom of their birth-gender.)
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I still stand by the notion that most of of Genesis 1-11 was to be understood apocalyptically. Yet at the same time, as I study some of these passages in that context (and this has been stated before) they seem to be parodies of ancient mythology. The Noah narrative is not to be understood literally and I’m not sure if there literally was a man, but it seems to be poking fun of the Epic of Gilgamesh and other Flood myths.
Yet I’m not totally sure about how to go about it in my writing when I get to it.
EDIT: After all of Ham’s complaints about “bath tub” Arks, I was kind of expecting one that looked more boxy.
Here’s another article on this ark, by MOTHERBOARD.
Note the mural of the drowning girl sinner being attacked by a shark. How sick is that?
Now you’re onto something, but Gen. 1-11 does not parody the myths of the Ancient Near East (ANE). Rather, the myths are re-cast to contrast the one, true God of Israel to the false gods of surrounding cultures. The Gospel of Mark does the same. The famous Priene Calendar Inscription calls Augustus a “Savior” and a “God” whose birth marked “the beginning of the good news (Gk. evangelion) for the world.”
It is against this backdrop that the opening words of Mark’s gospel, written in Rome, must be considered: “The beginning of the good news (Gk. evangelion) of Jesus the Anointed, the Son of God.” Not only was Jesus executed on the charge that he claimed to be King of the Jews, but his message, “the good news,” was presented by the gospel writers as the true alternative to the cult of emperor worship
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Interesting observation. I was thinking that the answer to the question as to stern and bow, was that he wanted to make it look like our preconceptions of what the ark would look like. Which is one of the things that he blasts as being wrong since we tend to have lots of cutesy model and cartoons of the ark that deny the seriousness of the story (one thing that I agree with him on). Ironically, he built the ark to resemble what those cartoon arks have conditioned us to expect.