About that Boat - Noah's Ark

What a ridiculous article; it is utterly permeated with assumptions. Such as the fact that they admit they have no idea what the ark looked like, going so far as to say "Little is known about the shape and form of the Ark’s hull. However, several explorers have each claimed that they have discovered the remains of the Ark at some sites on Mt. Ararat.8 Based on their arguments and references,9 we estimated the form of the Ark’s hull as that of a barge-type ship."So the "design" of the ark is based on discredited claims. If they know where the bloody ark is, why didn't they just go there and look for themselves?Although the naval technology is rather beyond my comprehension, it does not seem logical to me to analyse the notional arks performance by direct comparison with modern passanger ships. Now correct me if I'm wrong, but modern passenger ships are made of riveted steel, not pinned planks.They refer to a "weighted average" of indeices but do not explain the weighting. They eventually conlude the ark had a near-optimal hull form, except they admit at the beginning that they have no idea what the form "was", and have simply selected one.At another point they remakr that they are introducing their own term into an existing equation becuase "the waves came from all directions with equal proabability". Thats complete bunk - waves are generated by wind and currents, both of which would NOT be random at the point of local conditions. They then "average" these "safety indices" which I suspect will have produced a toally fictitois result. Becuase what would happen in real life is that wave after wave would hit one side with cumulative effect, and yet in the model the cumulative effect is offset by notional waves coming the other way.Looks like junk to me I'm afraid.

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The rules for steel ships were used for imposed loads and stability, not hull stresses. So this part of the analysis is independent of hull material and structure (assuming the hull is rigid of course).

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That doesn't appear as if it can possibly be true - loads and stability impinge directly on the hull and cause stress. That is, the possible degree of sustainable instability must necessarily be a function of the hulls actual strength. Which is why, to the best of my knowledge, the most efficient wooden hull designs have been flexible rather than rigid.

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I don't think much of the random sea (confused sea) state either, in terms of it's low probability in steady wind conditions. Perhaps they used this because they considered it the worst case.

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Well no, it appears to me to be an extreme optimum case; that is the way I read it they appear to have cancelled out wave action by assuming waves come equally from all sides. There is no basis for this assumption, not even if there were a global flood, because waves would still be generated by wind and current. So I suspect that this is a manipulation that removes a great deal of stress from their model, making it more "plausible".Fundamentally, I just don't think a boat this big could have been built with the technology of the day. There is a pretty smooth progression of naval technology in the mediterranean basin all the way into, and some way beyond, the late middle ages, and a boat of this scale appears to be much, much too early to be technically feasible. You reflect this in your argument about integrated planking but fail to explain how Noah came by this hi tech imformation or why it was subsequently lost.This message has been edited by contracycle, 12-16-2004 05:56 AM

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Wrong again. A random sea does not assume all the waves are cancelling each other. Even a non Naval Architect should know a bit more about waves - it would be an absurd fluke for all the waves to have just the right amplitude, wavelength, period and phase to cancel each other out.

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Yes I agree - that is the substance of my criticism. what they say is:

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Since the waves came from all directions with the same probability, we defined another safety index , which was given by taking the average of the safety indices for each wave direction.

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So they have unilaterally defined a new safety index, which is the average of the indices of each direction - that surely implies a model in which waves do come from all sides and cancel each othewr out. Accumulated stress has been removed from the model.

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hat's odd - land based constructions in enduring materals like stone isn't a smooth progression at all. "With spectacular suddenness, an architecture sprang up that was suitable for kings and gods...stone monuments that rank with the most impressive of any age" (Ancient Egypt: Lionel Casson, Leonard Krieger, Time Life Books 1966.

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You're citing information that is 38 years old."Sudden" stone architecture is not that sudden - after all, stone is among the most venerable materials worked by humans. We were working stone arguably before we were even human - so the appearance of stone monuments simply is not that weird, even if it is sudden (which I don't accept either, really).Besides that, whether or not stone-working had a smooth progression is aonly an argument by implication against a smooth progression of naval technology. The fact is there WAS such a smooth progression, which has been much studied.

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Even with the familiar Greek trireme Casson confesses "Very little is known about the shape and construction of the hull". p89 Triremes 500-3232BC. Sound familiar?

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Well that depends on the tone which which you ask the question, you see. The fact is we are not staring open mouthed at the trireme asking "how did they do that". We know almost everything there is to know about the trireme, but not everything. We could build one today, but could not say it was 100% the same as one that would have been built by actual greeks.

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Even the shear size claimed by ancient records of Greek ships had been disqualified by the consensus of opinion - until some super-sized bronze ramming bows turned up.

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You will note that is change based on EVIDENCE. What is the EVIDENCe for the arks hull?The fact of the matter is that in the mediterranean basin, naval technology did progress smoothly. The Greeks and Phoenicians were the premier shi-builders in the early classical period, and the Romans inherited and conitnued their techniques. These were stillo in place by the time the Empire broke up into Eastern and Western segments, plus the basin recieved an infusion of European naval tech through the Crusades. Still at this point the Arabs who had conquered the east were building better ships, until Europe copied the techniques and the first fully modern sailing vessels appeared. at that pouint innovation prewttu much stops until the developement of steam - the limits of the materials have been reached.There is simply no basis for thinking that the Isaelites were an exception to that process - there is no evidence even in their own histories for any siginificant naval technology or experience at all. The idea that Noah could build a vessel so sophisticiated from a standing start is totally implausible.

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You appear to be saying a ship in a perfectly random sea will always experience no net primary wave loadings, such as wave bending moment. Or did you mean to accuse only the Hong study of saying this?

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I am saying, that is how I read what the Hong study is saying. They themselves said they were introducing a new, synthetic term. Why?

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In either case, how do you explain the inclusion of the wave bending moment (Mw) in the elementary beam theory equation (9)?
Or this derived relationship between wood thickness and wave height?

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How long is a piece of string?I don't explain them, but then I don't need to. I have already openly admitted that this stuff is beyond my capacity to read and understand properly, but that it APPEARS TO ME that the math is being manipulated by the introduction of this term. It is you advancing the claim, and so you should be explaining my problems away for me, not challenging me to explain them.

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The Israelites did not become a nation until several centuries after Abraham.

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sigh

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# Noah was a pre-Flood human (pre-Flood humans have an unknown level of technological knowledge)

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There is no evidence of a flood. This argument - toward the veracity of the ark - is an attempt to argue by implication for a flood on which the ark sailed. You cannot site the conclusion as evidence of the premise.Secondly, there is nothing in the flood that suggests that there would not be archeological remains of pre-flood societies. We have wood-work thousands of years old due to being immersed - where are remains of pre-flood tech? Whatever technology these mythical people are attributed, it should not violate the KNOWN human timeline.

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Noah was about 500 years old (a person could probably assimilate quite a bit of knowledge in 500 years)

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Seeing as no human has ever been recorded to luive remotely that long, thats a good reason for rejecting the rest of these claims prima facie, wouldn't you say?

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* Noah was recieving instructions from God, who designed the universe (so, actually, Noah's ship-building knowledge is almost, if not completely, irrelevant).

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You couldn't be more wrong. This would be a society so truncated that it would have to have lost a large chunk of its other technological knowledge - the fine points of pot-making or bronze-smelting, say. If the boat was god-given tech, and so succesful that it is optimised even by 17th century standards, than it would necessarily have become the very basis of ALL israelite technology. Like a cargo cult. What we should see as a result is an immediate explosion of naval science. And we do NOT see that in the people who supposedly came from the ark at all - we see them as totally landlocked and without significant naval technology ever.

Ac tually there was a thread recently arguing that some Japanese researchers had shown a (notional) ark hull to be an "optimal" design. Should still be around somewhere. Please note I am not endorsing the theory, but it was an attemptm to argue for a practical boat.This message has been edited by contracycle, 02-03-2005 10:28 AM