More Comments from Readers-Part V

Here are more comments and questions from readers of this blog:
Comment #1: “It seems to me that you are overdoing this idea that coastal vessels could not go out to deep water. I’ve been sailing a long time in boats, like Nephi, I’ve built and I don’t find this fear of blue water like you claim” Gerard Y.
Response: The next time you go to sea and get out beyond the sight of land in some far off area, in your vessel built only for coastal streaming, throw overboard your GPS, your radio, your compass, your telephone, your diesel engine, your maps and charts, etc., and head into the nearest storm front. If you survive, write us again and tell us about no fear.
    In boat building, initially it was hulling a tree trunk to form a dugout canoe, which had no joints; next came stitching wood joints together with hemp rope for coastal voyaging; then to strengthen the joints, bolts and screws were used, then the joining shaped fillets, and later creating epoxy fillets along the chine at the bow and stern as well as stringers and frames into the hull for adding strength.

A fillet is a continuous bead of thickened epoxy mixture applied to the angle created between two parts for increased strength; a low-density fillet requires a much larger radius than a high-density fillet to achieve the same strength

Once again, sailing offshore requires a much sturdier ship construction; and hull bonding to the deck is extremely important in ocean vessels where pounding can loosen such connections that lead to difficulties—of course, a joint that does not rely on bolts, screws, rivets or adhesive for strength or water-tightness is best, but not likely available to Nephi and certainly not available to local ship builders of the time. Internal stiffening systems—grid floor systems, and full-length stringers contribute greatly to the stiffness and rigidity of a boat. If the interior woodwork is just glued or lightly attached to a hull liner pan or to the hull, it's not uncommon to discover it breaking loose after some distance of ocean sailing. From a manufacturing standpoint, hull liners are substantially less expensive than "stick-built” interiors, but not likely available to Nephi.
    The problem arising in ancient ship building was less understood than that of later periods, and mistakes were often made that did not allow for such vessels to be taken into the deep ocean, where waves and currents are so strong that small problems quickly become major issues. To the inexperienced, unknowing or uninformed, the aspects of boat building are far more complicated than one might assume, and without proper instruction (the Lord showing Nephi how to do things), coastal vessels—the only type ships known at the time, simply were unable to broach the rough pounding of deep ocean sailing. Take, as an example, deck-stepped masts that work well, but only if proper structural members transmit the load to the keel.
    Otherwise deflection and possibly delaminating under the mast occur. And the trueness of the mast can be extremely important in erection—none of which really matter in the fishery vessels of the time that set in at night, during storms, and rough weather.
    In 600 B.C. Necos, king of Egypt, sent Phoenicians in ships to sail down the Red Sea and then around Africa and return through the Mediterranean, the Phoenicians stopped several times. As the Greek historian, Herodotus of Halicarnassus, wrote in 440 BC : “So the Phoenicians set out from the Red Sea and  p241 sailed the southern sea; whenever autumn came they would put in and sow the land, to whatever part of Libya they might come, and there await the harvest; then, having gathered in the crop, they sailed on, so that after two years had passed, it was in the third that they rounded the Pillars of Heracles and came to Egypt (Herodotus, Histories 4:42, translated by Aubrey de Sélincourt).

Map of the Phoenician voyage around Africa according to Herodotus.The Phoenicians made several overnight stops and two major lay overs while planting and harvesting crops. This is the route Heartland theorists claims Lehi took as well

 

Herodotus also wrote when it came to their attempt to round the Cape in the same way the Jaredites are claimed to have gone: “For weeks, they were struggling against the wind and the current, only to reach the African west coast in July, where they encountered the contrary Canary Current and the North Eastern trade winds. But they must have been relieved to find themselves rowing in a northerly direction again.
    Somehow they managed to beat against the wind and the current, and in November they must have landed somewhere on the coast of modern Mauritania, maybe at Bay of Arguin, where their Carthaginian compatriots were to build the trading post of Kerne in the not too distant future. The voyagers sowed their wheat, repaired their ships.”
    It should be noted that rowing against winds and currents is possible, though both exhausting and very time consuming. However, the Jaredites were in water-tight barges and could not work against the wind and currents in any fashion, therefore, this route would not have been possible.
Comment #2: ”You quote Helaman 14:23 all the time about Mountains whose height is great. Is there no other scripture regarding this event of mountains rising?” Char O.
Response: “For thus spake the prophet: The Lord God surely shall visit all the house of Israel at that day, some with his voice, because of their righteousness, unto their great joy and salvation, and others with the thunderings and the lightnings of his power, by tempest, by fire, and by smoke, and vapor of darkness, and by the opening of the earth, and by mountains which shall be carried up” (1 Nephi 19:11).
Comment #3: “The “narrow pass” through the narrow neck of land in Mesoamerica, that is the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, was the route used almost exclusively by pre-Columbian travelers, according to Sorenson, who walked or marched from the land southward to the land northward or vice versa. Today’s travelers through this same route can “feel” the relevance of the term “narrow pass” as they experience the impenetrable mountains to the left and right (west and east) as they travel north or south through the Isthmus of Tehuantepec” Pedro M.
Response: One can feel the same narrowness, more or less, passing through the Parowan Gap in Southern Utah, though it is rather short. The point is, in Tehuantepec, at roughly 144 miles in width, there are other ways to get from the north to the south (lots of them) and vice versa. Perhaps not comfortably, or easily, as we would travel today, but certainly for an enemy bent on the destruction of another people and the securing of a land beyond for their future safety and from which to launch attacks. In the military, one of the first things you learn in combat, is that the enemy can find all sorts of ways to get from Point A to Point B that you never thought possible. For a true choke point, i.e., a place where the enemy can be kept from advancing has to be rather small and narrow, easily defensible, and have or provide no other possible place where a break-through can be achieved. A 144-mile width is simply out of the question in a day of bows and arrow, swords, and spears.
    You might want to study and famed battle of Thermopylae where a true choke point allowed a very small force to hold off a very large force in a battle before gunpowder. After three days of  battle and thousands dead, the only way the Pass fell, is that the Persians found a way around the mountain and circled around and attacked the Spartans from the rear.

Comment #4: “You talk about ancient roads in Peru as though no other place had any. There were roads in Central America and in North America” Quinn T.

Top Left: Ancient Peruvian road; Top Right: Roman Road; Bottom Left: Mesoamerican Maya road; Bottom Right: Ancient road in the eastern U.S. 

Response: Perhaps we need to understand what we are dealing with here in roads. Mormon tells us that the Nephite roads led from city to city and region to region and to all places of the land (3 Nephi 6:8); now when a culture invests that much time and effort into building roads, it is generally going to be found that those roads are not dirt trails, but something far more substantial and permanent. In South America, along the western Andean corridor, there are remnants of the finest roads built anywhere in the Western Hemisphere, far greater than Mesoamerica and, frankly, there were no such roads at all in North America ever found. Take as an example, this vast complex of roads that covered a distance of 25,000 to 30,000 miles in length, the coastal road alone was 2,500 miles long, and the principle main north-south highway covered 3,700 miles in length. A third highway, 3,200 miles long, ran from Ecuador to Cuzco to Chile, the major highways measured 24 feet across—the width of a modern four-lane highway today. 
    Some of the lesser roads were between 15 and 24 feet in width. Some roads were stepped up steep inclines, others were cut through solid stone mountains, some crossed over as many as 100 stone, wood or rope bridges, with some rope bridges across deep ravines and wide canyons—the one across the Apurímac River spanned a distance of 150 feet. There were distance markers every 4.5 miles, rest stations for travelers every 12 to 18 miles, and communication stations every 1.5 miles, which allowed a message to be passed over 1250 miles in five days. This allowed field commanders to communicate quickly with base commanders, such as when Helaman wrote to Moroni about his stripling warriors and the result of their battles (Alma 56:1, chapters 56-57-58). Only the roads of the ancient Romans rivaled the accomplishment of the early Peruvians.