Today in ship-building and, no
doubt, for many centuries, the intended use of the ship determines both its
weight and its hull shape. Thus, racing boats are generally as light weight as
possible, and include a deep-V hull in an attempt to reduce pounding. On the
other hand, patrol boats and other ships, which are subject to slamming on
rough seas, are built with relatively thick protective walls and are,
therefore, much heavier, and are traditionally made with a flatter semi- displacement
hull which is very fast in quiet waters but which tends to slam in rough seas.
Top Left: Flat bottom, narrow hull; Center:
Flat bottom, rounded hull; Right: Deep V hull, peaked bottom. The first two
would be good for coastal waters, the deep-V hull would be better for deep
water; Bottom Left: Built for speed; Center: Built for coastal waters; Right:
Built for cargo
Of course what we know today was
not known in 600 B.C., or for upwards of 2,000 years. That is, not known to
man, but certainly known to the Lord, who designed Nephi’s ship. In that case,
the boat’s speed was not the important factor, though being able to move easily
in strong currents was a plus, but the important factor was durability. Two
other points were extremely important, and that was that their bows lifted to
on-coming waves, and their high sterns prevented them being swamped from
behind.
In fact, all early ships were
clinker-built, i.e., their hulls were made of over-lapping planks hand cut with
adzes. The smooth-fitted carvel-built style required sawing, and was not known
before the Carrack and Caravel ships of the fourteenth century, which led to
the ship-building Age of Exploration.
As late as the 18th
century, English seamen were still “stemming” the currents (making headway
against tidal currents) along the eastern coast of the American colonies. They
refused the advice of the American seamen and fishermen who had
advised them to avoid the powerful Gulf Stream or to cross it and get out of it
as opposed to "stemming" (sailing against) it. Even whalers knew that
the whales avoided the stream, and swam only along its outer edges. For those
who have never sailed in weather ships, dependent upon the currents and winds,
it might seem unimportant where one sailed in the days of Lehi, however,
experienced seamen early on learned to move across the seas with the currents.
This is the knowledge that allowed Columbus to sail westward into the Atlantic,
something no other mariner had been able to accomplish since the first days of
sailing.
Benjamin
Franklin was the first to develop a chart of the Gulf Stream current and its
surrounding navigational aids. Franklin’s great-grandson, Alexander Dallas
Bache, followed in Benjamin’s footsteps, focusing the efforts of the U.S. Coast
Survey, of which he was the superintendent, on the Gulf Stream. Survey ships,
using devices and techniques developed by scientists and sailors over the past
century crisscrossed the Gulf Stream taking soundings, bottom samplings and
temperature, speed and direction measurements of the current itself. The Survey
became the first governmental agency to undertake a sustained oceanographic
study of the Gulf Stream.
The
point is, such survey work, or knowledge of currents and winds, was crucial to
the early sailor. Such knowledge allowed American seamen to sail to foreign
ports faster than other seamen, making their trading efforts far more
profitable. It also aided early naval efforts, allowing American seamen to
outperform the navies of other countries.
Now,
knowing winds and currents was knowledge that God possessed from the beginning,
long before man became aware of such things, it was a simple matter for the
Lord to 1) know what winds and currents would take a sailing vessel from one
point on earth to another, 2) plan out Lehi’s course before his ship was ever
built, and 3) show Nephi how to build a ship that would weather that course,
and take advantage of the winds and currents for a swift, simple, and safe
journey. So simple, swift and safe was the journey, that Nephi was prompted
only to say of it, “And
it came to pass that I, Nephi, did guide the ship, that we sailed again towards
the promised land. And it came to pass that after we had sailed for the space
of many days we did arrive at the promised land” (1 Nephi 18:22-23).
So then we need to understand
what course it was that took the Lehi colony from the shores of Arabia, across
the seas, to the land the Lord promised Lehi and his posterity. And not to
belabor the point of his travel in the wilderness to Bountiful, which has been
written of by numerous authors, let us just start at Bountiful along the
southern Arabian coast, where the Irreantum Sea could be no other than the
Arabian Sea.
From that point, Lehi had three
directions that he could sail: 1) east along the coast, 2) southeast toward
Australia, or 3) south toward the Indian Ocean. So let us take these directions
one at a time:
1) East along the coast toward India. This course, which was used by
traders in small, shallow-draft boats for centuries, would ultimately lead to
Malaysia and Indonesia, after crossing south of Sri Lanka and the Bay of Bengal
to the Andaman Sea. Once within the Andaman Sea, then south through the 500-mile
stretch of the Malacca Strait between Malaysia and Sumatra. This is such a
dangerous route, that even modern ships, with diesel engines, GPS and radar,
continually run aground or are wrecked in the narrow confines of the southern
end of the Strait—it is such a difficult area to navigate, that Thailand has
proposed several times to cut a canal through the isthmus of Kra, saving 600
miles on the journey through the Straits, even offering to cover the costs,
with Indonesia and Burma suggesting other methods to bypass the Strait.
In addition, this strait has
always been one of the busiest shipping channels in the world, and in 600 B.C.
would have been the route of hundreds of trading ships constantly moving east
and west from the Spice Islands and other trading ports to India, Arabia and
Africa. Hardly a place Lehi would have wanted people to know of his passage.
After all, this area has been populated since 2000 B.C., and the important and
strategic sea-lane position through this area has placed the large populace in
a position to know all about everyone who traversed this area.
In addition, Laman, Lemuel and the sons of Ishmael had just spent 8
years in the wilderness, several of those years on the largest sand desert in
the world. Why would they not be tempted to land in these gorgeous islands in a
climate that was beyond anything they had ever experienced? After all, they had
already shown several times they were willing to rebel and take over, even
threatening to kill those who opposed them
Another important point, is if
Lehi was to sail where other ships were constantly sailing, along the coastal
waters to Indonesia, why build a special boat like no other boat of the day?
Any boat would have sufficed to travel in that direction, and been more suited
for coastal waters and navigation within narrow straits and through island
chains (Indonesia is an archipelago comprising approximately 17,508 islands and
today is the fourth most populous country in the world—surely it would have
been very well populated in Lehi’s time).
And lastly on this course, storms
along the Arabian sea coast always blow inland. The storm Nephi describes in 1
Nephi 18:13-21 would have blown Nephi’s ship into the seacoast and wrecked it
on the rocks and shore had they been sailing to the east along the coastal
waters as so many Theorists have suggested. Even if they were sailing in deeper
water, a four day storm would have driven them toward the coast, and not
possibly “back the way they had come,” that is, westward. For that storm not to
have wrecked them, it would have had to occur further out to sea, to the south
of the Arabian coast, and far enough south that four days of being driven back
the way they had come did not drive them back into the land.
(See the next post, “The Need for
Deep Hulls in Ocean Sailing Part III,” to continue with the other two points
regarding the three directions Lehi had as a course away from Bountiful to the
Land of Promise, and which he chose)
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