And here we run into our very first problem: simply gathering enough wood to build the boat. When another notoriously large ship (that was purportedly only a fraction of the Ark's size), the
Great Michael, was built in 1511, it was said to have taken "all the woods of Fife" (a county in Scotland famous for its shipbuilding), as well as having to import wood from France, other areas in the Baltic sea, and cargo ships scrapped for use in its construction. The
Wyoming, the largest wooden ship ever built, used 3100 tons wood and 300 tons metal.
[5] A ship of Noah's size would have required tens of thousands of trees (and on top of that, high quality timber trees) to be cut for its construction, something that is not exactly feasible considering the Ark was probably built somewhere in what is modern day Iraq, which as anyone can tell you has never exactly been known for its thick abundant forests.
[6]
Even if Noah could acquire the impossible amount of wood needed to construct it, however, we run into further problems. The Ark would have been a sizeable fraction of the size of an aircraft carrier or a battleship, and a wooden boat that size would have been too leaky and flexible to withstand the stresses of global flood conditions. The largest wooden ship which was definitely built was the schooner
Wyoming at 330ft on deck with a total length of 450ft, and she required both diagonal iron braces for support and constant use of mechanical pumps to stop her hull flooding. While it is claimed that some Chinese treasure galleons were 400-650ft long, there is little actual evidence of this, and these ships also required iron-braced keels. Since the Bible does
not list any metal components, Creationists will tend to argue that the mysterious "gopher wood" must
have had properties more akin to structural steel in a bit of
circular reasoning that tries to fit what we know about the problems with large wooden ships and their
a priori assumption that the bible can't possibly be wrong.
[7] Invoking what is simply a Goddidit
escape hatch then simply raises the question of why Noah had to build the ark in the first place.
Noah's Ark, had it existed, would hold the record for the longest all-wooden ship, and yet
Young Earth Creationists believe it happened in 2348 BCE.
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