John Tvedtnes says, “I believe that there is evidence to show that Lehi and his family were craftsmen and artisans--probably metalworkers… . When the Lord tells Nephi, in the land of Bountiful, to build a ship, he has to give detailed instructions on how to do it. (1 Nephi 17:8, 18:1-4). But there is no record that Nephi had to ask how to prepare the metal tools with which he built the ship. [John Tvedtnes, ”Was Lehi a Caravaneer?,“ F.A.R.M.S., p. 13]
“Thou Shalt Construct a Ship”
The Hiltons explain that by the time the ore was found and smelted, the tools were forged, the ship was designed, the right size, quantity, and quality of lumber was acquired, sufficient manpower was found to ”construct a ship" (1 Nephi 17:8), and sufficient quantities of food were harvested to stock it, at least a few years would have gone by. By this time the size of the group could have swelled to around 40 or 50 people, and according to the Hiltons’ research, a boat of about 60 feet or larger might have been required. [Lynn M. and Hope A. Hilton, In Search of Lehi’s Trail, p. 111]
“Thou Shalt Construct a Ship”
According to Noel Reynolds, the ship-building story of 1 Nephi 17-18 is an elaborate chiasm dealing with Nephi’s response to the murmuring of Laman and Lemuel. The chiastic structure of this story testifies of its importance and probable role in the oral tradition that the early Nephites established to refute the Lamanite claim against Nephi’s ruling authority.
A. Nephi is summoned to the mountain, where he speaks to the Lord (17:7)
B. Nephi is told to construct a ship after the manner the Lord will show him (17:8)
C. The Lord shows Nephi where to find ore to make tools (17:10).
D. The Lord will miraculously bless them in the wilderness so they will know it was he who delivered them. Nephi keeps the commandments and exhorts his brethren to faithfulness (17:12-15).
E. Nephi’s brethren murmur against him and withhold their labor from him (17:17-18).
F. Nephi is exceedingly sorrowful (17:19).
G. Nephi’s brethren present the details of their case against him and their father (17:19-21).
H. Nephi’s brethren defend the Jews of Jerusalem for their righteousness (17:22)
I. Although the Lord by miracles led “our fathers,” the Israelites, out of Egypt and through the wilderness to the promised land, they hardened their hearts and reviled against both Moses and God (17:23-30).
J. God blesses the righteous and destroys the wicked. He “esteemeth all flesh in one.” Whoever is righteous is favored of the Lord (17:31-5).
J’ The Lord blesses the righteous and destroys the wicked. He loves whoever will have him to be their God (17:36-40)
I’ Even though the Lord loved “our fathers,” covenanted with them, led them out of Egypt, and straitened them by miraculous means in the wilderness, still they hardened their hearts and reviled against both Moses and God (17:40-2).
H’ Nephi prophesies the destruction of the Jews of Jerusalem for their wickedness (17:43).
G’ Nephi presents the case against his brethren (17:44-6).
F‘ Nephi’s soul is rent with anguish (17:47).
E‘ Nephi’s brethren are angry with him, but he commands them not to withhold their labor from him (17:48-9).
D‘ The Lord miraculously shocks Nephi’s brethren so they will know the Lord is their God. Nephi tells them to obey specific commandments (17:53-5).
C’ The Lord shows Nephi how to work timbers for the ship (18:1).
B’ Nephi builds the ship after the manner the Lord has shown him (18:2).
A’ Nephi often goes to the mount to pray to the Lord (18:3).
[Noel B. Reynolds, “Nephite Kingship Reconsidered,” in Mormons, Scripture, and the Ancient World, FARMS, pp. 179-180]
“Thou Shalt Construct a Ship”
According to Potter and Wellington, when the Lord instructed Nephi to “arise and get thee into the mountain” (1 Nephi 17:7), it was not, as is often believed, to command Nephi to “out of nowhere” build a ship. Nephi already knew the “why.” That is why he had come to the Dhofar region on the southern Arabian seashore. That was where the ocean-going ships were built and sailed from. The mountain experience had more to do with the “how,” “when,” “where” and “with whom” to build such a ship.
We know that in the valley of Lemuel, Nephi had witnessed in a vision the land of promise and the “many waters” that divided the Gentiles from the seed of his brethren (1 Nephi 13:10). If Nephi actually saw the Pacific and Atlantic oceans, and how they divided the people of the world, then he must have understood that his voyage would be long and dangerous. However, the ocean-going vessels of Nephi’s time which sailed the Indian Ocean were not completely suitable for making such a long journey. Nevertheless, Nephi needed to know about these ships, and about what it took to sail these ships in order to make his ship capable of getting to the promised land. Once again, that is why Nephi and Lehi were directed by the Lord (“south-southeast” and then “eastward”) to come to the Dhofar region.
So what transpired on the mountain appears to have been a familiar process for the faithful. First, Nephi “cried unto the Lord,” presumably because he needed the Lord’s help. (1 Nephi 17:8) He needed a design for a large oceangoing ship that was capable of reaching the promised land. Upon asking, the Lord answered Nephi’s cry, “Thou shalt construct a ship after the manner which I shall show thee that I may carry thy people across these waters” (1 Nephi 17:9). Nephi does not seem surprised on receiving instructions on how to build the ship. On the contrary, he appears to have already studied shipbuilding. When he received the Lord’s instructions, Nephi does not ask the Lord what tools he needed, implying that he already knew which shipbuilding tools he needed, only where he could find ore to make the tools (1 Nephi 17:10).
One could argue that it was no problem at all for Nephi to build a ship, for the Lord could have simply supplied Nephi with all the materials and knowledge he needed on request. That is, anytime Nephi needed to know something, presto, the Lord gave him the answer. Likewise, if Nephi required some materials to fabricate his ship, the Lord conveniently showed Nephi where to get them. Potter and Wellington refer to this as the “storybook” version of Nephi’s ship. It is a scenario that they think significantly misrepresents how the Lord deals with his faithful servants, significantly undervalues what Nephi actually accomplished through applied faith and works, and leads to a mythological, rather than factual, understanding of the Book of Mormon. Besides, the storybook version makes no sense. If the Lord simply wanted to supply everything for Nephi, one miracle after another, why build a ship in the first place? Why not just have him build an airplane or unfold a magic carpet? Why not have them walk across the ocean?
The likelihood of the Lord-did-it-all theory seems even more doubtful if one considers the context in which the ship was built. Why would the Lord suddenly start intervening in every matter, after having Nephi and his group suffer great afflictions for eight years in the desert where they nearly died? Nephi seems to have had to suffer through each ordeal the same as any man. The sun shone just as hot on him, the rain fell just as wet on him, the wind blew just as hard on him as anyone else. So why now would we believe that the Lord handed everything to Nephi on a platter, giving him skills he had never learned, knowledge he had never gained and abilities he had never developed. This totally misses the point that the building of the ship, as well as the desert journey, were all part of Nephi’s development under the hand of the Lord. Nephi would have to learn line upon line, precept upon precept, as all who had gone before him and as all who would come after him.
To hand Nephi everything would have made a mockery of the previous eight years. Building a ship required Nephi to learn from local tradesmen how to smelt ore to make tools, to cut stones to form anchors, to work wood within very tight specification, to weave sails and to fabricate rope, to mold pots for storing water, to tan hides for bellows and for fastening the ships riggings. Along with his trip through the wilderness, the building of Nephi’s ship was, one might say, his university. In the New World Nephi would become their ruler and teacher (2 Nephi 5:19), passing on to a new society a storehouse of knowledge that took civilizations thousands of years to acquire. Nephi would personally teach his people the basic skills of metallurgy (2 Nephi 5:15), building construction and the working of all manner of woods (2 Nephi 5:15). One could say that these teachings culminated in the construction of a temple to the Lord of “exceedingly fine” workmanship (2 Nephi 5:16).
Certainly, the Lord inspired Nephi from time to time, but it also seems likely that Nephi used his own initiative in acquiring the skills and resources he required. Brigham Young, who himself led a difficult exodus to a land of promise, taught:
The old theory is that the kingdom of God, and all pertaining to it, is spiritual and not temporal; that is the traditional notion of our brother Christians. But a person may merely think until he goes down to the grave, and he will never be the means of saving one soul, not even his own, unless he adds physical labor to his thinking. He must think, and pray, and preach, and toil and labor with mind and body, in order to build up Zion in the last days. You cannot build your house … by mere thinking, it also requires physical labor … If we talk to you and you sit and hear, that involves labor, and everything connected with building up Zion requires actual, severe labor. It is nonsense to talk about building up any kingdom except by labor; it requires the labor of every part of our organization, whether it be mental, physical, or spiritual, and that is the only way to build up the kingdom of God.
It is also significant that when asked to go to Jerusalem and acquire the brass plates from Laban, Nephi taught that the Lord “giveth no commandments unto the children of man, save he shall prepare a way for them that they may accomplish the thing which he commandeth them” (1 Nephi 3:7). The Lord did just that, and Nephi acquired the plates, but only after many difficulties, dangers and individual efforts.
Now with the above comments clearly in mind, the Book of Mormon student should note that the Lord also “prepared” the land of Bountiful (1 Nephi 17:5) as a place where they not only could survive for a time, but find the materials and knowledge they needed to build a ship and sail her across the oceans. Indeed, the Lord led them to Bountiful. Why? It was there that Nephi, by applying his own initiative, could learn from experienced people the skills he needed to know, and where he could work for, trade for, or simply discover the materials he needed in order to fulfill the commandment which the Lord had given him. It is an eternal principle that the Lord will help those who ask Him, but only if they are willing to learn and apply all they can. Nephi would teach this principle in terms of personal salvation: “for we know that it is by grace that we are saved, after all we can do (2 Nephi 25:23). [George Potter and Richard Wellington, Discovering the Lehi-Nephi Trail, Unpublished Manuscript, 2000, pp. 205-208] [See the commentary on Ether 2:19]
“Thou Shalt Construct a Ship”
The fact that Nephi was to ”construct a ship" that would take his family from Bountiful (southeast Arabia) to the Promised Land (the Americas) is a statement loaded with cultural implications. The cultural backdrop for the building of such a ship would place a number of requirements for Nephi’s geographical and cultural location, and push his abilities to achieve such a task to the utmost limits, even under favorable circumstances. Nevertheless, what might seem impossible to some can be achieved by others. This has been brought out very clearly by the writings of Tim Severin
In 1976-77, intrigued by ancient maritime tales of distant voyages, and after much research, Oxford trained Tim Severin crossed the Atlantic Ocean in a leather boat in order to prove that the Irish monk St. Brendan could have discovered the American continent more than a thousand years ago. His subsequent book, The Brendan Voyage became an international bestseller. For the Book of Mormon student, however, what Severin did after that is of unique importance. After completing his epic journey, Severin became enthralled in recreating one of the most famous travel stories of all time: the seven voyages of Sindbad the Sailor from The Thousand and One Nights
In 1980, after meticulous research and with the help of Omani money and government backing, Severin succeeded in building a replica of an Arab sailing ship of a kind that had not been seen for centuries--a vessel like those which Sindbad and other Arabs navigated a quarter of the way round the globe in search of trade more than a thousand years ago. He named the ship Sohar after the town said to have been Sindbad’s birth place. It was also the most prosperous trading port and city in Oman at that time, and the terminus for ships embarking or returning from voyages to the farthest Orient. With a crew of twenty, Severin navigated a 6,000 mile journey that took them across the Arabian Sea to India, then to Sri Lanka and across the Indian Ocean to Sumatra and the Malacca Straits, and finally through the China Seas to Canton. The story of this astonishing 71/2-month voyage is told in Tim Severin’s book, The Sindbad Voyage
Severin’s book is recommended reading for any Book of Mormon student who wants to gain perspective on the shipbuilding and voyage which Nephi undertook in order to reach the Americas. Despite the fact that Nephi received inspiration and direction from the Lord, the details of what it took for Severin to construct the Sohar seem to place certain requirements on Nephi’s location in the land Bountiful. I will first list these and then give a few excerpts from his book in order to explain the list.
1. Nephi would have needed a nearby population for construction help. He could not have built the ship without expertly trained carpenters, ropemakers, shipbuilders, sailors, etc.
2. Nephi needed access to the right kind of timber, fibers for sails, ropes, resins for caulking, etc., and the right techniques to work them. While they probably were directly available in the land Bountiful, if there was an existing shipping trade closeby, then some of these materials could have been accessed by trade. This would have required at least a bay and perhaps a harbor or port.
3. Nephi needed access to ore (either iron or copper) in order to make tools and construct the ship. Although ancient Arab ships were sewn together, Nephi did not make his ship “after the manner of men.” He could have used metal nails. This would have made the boat much more secure and cut his construction time in half.
4. Nephi needed a beach next to a port inlet so that his ship could be launched, checked for leaks, outfitted with masts and rigging, and loaded with supplies without being subjected to heavy destructive tides. He would have also needed some smaller boats in order to ferry men and supplies to the ship.
5. Nephi needed contact with experienced sailors and boats in order to obtain the needed training to sail the boat. While it is true that Nephi and the others could have obtained some training during their stay in the Valley of Lemuel on the Red Sea, the conditions at Bountiful were not exactly the same, and the extent of Nephi’s voyage would have required much more preparation. Nephi might have even needed some experienced sailors to man his boat.
[Alan C. Miner, Personal Notes]
Now for the benefit of the reader, I will give some excerpts from that book:
It took nearly five years to plan and carry out the voyage, and to present its results in words, pictures, and film. (p. 1)
The Sindbad Voyage … needed the research, design and construction of a full-sized sailing ship. It required a place to build her, a port to fit her out, and a large crew to sail her. On board we would have to carry enough spare materials to maintain an early medieval ship at sea for at least eight months of voyaging, with enough food and water for each stage of the journey. (p. 18)
Fortunately the history of Arab ships has attracted the attention of a number of maritime historians, and there were several good studies on the design of early Arab vessels… . The earlier Arab vessels had been double-ended, that is, they came to a point at both bow and stern. The only double-ended, ocean-going Arab ship still to be seen widely in the Arabian Gulf was a type of vessel which the Arabs call a boom. (p 19)
All the early texts make it abundantly clear that early Arab ships were not nailed together, but that their planks were sewn together with cord made from coconut husks. It seemed a flimsy way to make an ocean-going ship. Yet all the early authors agreed that this extraordinary method of construction had been the most distinguishing feature of an Arab ship. (p. 20)
[In search of a construction site] I … went to take a look at the Omani port of Sur just inside Cape Ras al Hadd, the most easterly point on the Arabian peninsula. Here, within living memory, a large fleet of wooden merchant ships had been built and maintained. (p. 26)
The timber for building Omani ships is brought nearly 1300 miles from the Malabar coast of India. It is a trade which goes as far back as the earliest records, because Oman lacks trees large enough to provide first-class boat timber. (p. 31)
The timber of these ships was not teak, but a very similar wood called aini… . Technically it is virtually identical to teak--it has very nearly the same strength, density and weight. It grows to a good size, and is easily worked, but it has a major drawback; it tends to split if nails are driven into it. (p. 35)
The keel of a boom is long, straight and massive; it is the very back bone of the vessel, and its dimensions dictate the remainder of the ship. For a shipwright builds mathematically. Once the keel is laid, every other timber relates to it at a particular angle or size, so that if one tells an Arab shipwright the type of vessel--boom or whatever--and the length of its keel, he will know exactly the final size and shape of the finished ship… . [The timber for the keel] needed two elephants to manoeuvre the great log down to the road. There it was put on trestles, and cut square by two men working a huge double-handed pit saw. (pp. 37-38)
We went back to Beypore to purchase the masts and spars for the ship. Now we were looking for a very special timber which the Indians call poon. Like a tremendous spearshaft, a mature poon tree sometimes rises 50 feet before it puts out a single branch. For centuries seamen have known that poon makes superb masts and spars… . Late that night we came across the perfect log, 65 feet long and tapering to exactly the right dimensions. (p. 43)
“I [sent] 140 tons of timber, much of it in odd shapes and sizes and angles, to Sur. ”(p. 46)
Minicoy is one of a group of islands where medieval Arab ships picked up the coconut rope used for shipbuilding, and until this century the only export from the Laccadives was coir, the rope made from coconut husks. So it seemed logical for me to try to obtain coconut rope for my replica sewn ship from the same source as the Arabs… . [I was told] that what I needed for ship building was a very special quality of coconut rope. It had to be hand rolled from the best-quality coconut husks. These husks had to be soaked, or retted, in sea water to loosen the fibres… . then pounded with wooden clubs … After that, the fibre should be twisted by hand into string. If twisted by machine, the threads would be too feeble… . I would need about fifteen hundred bundles of coconut string to build the ship I needed. I calculated the total length, and it came to four hundred miles! This seemed a colossal amount. (p. 40)
Some of the items … I would need for the construction of a sewn vessel were truly bizarre. There were the husks of 50,000 coconuts to be used as a kind of wadding, two particular thicknesses of string, and forty bundles of a curious knobbly wood from the islands which I suspected was mangrove root. This wood was immensely strong and hard, and Kunhikoya said it would be used for the levers which the ropeworkers would need when they were tightening up the lashings of the ship. There was also a quarter ton of a tree gum called chundruz, a natural resin which is more usually employed for making cheap incense. The boatbuilders would use it as a type of shellac, painting it between the planks… . [I also needed] half a dozen barrels of fish oil, which was to be mixed with melted sugar and painted on the outside of the completed hull. The oil came from tiny fish which were boiled in vats near Mangalore and the grease skimmed off. The stench of the oil was indescribable. Next there was half a ton of lime to be plastered to the underwater surfaces of the ship as a form of anti-fouling. To obtain the lime, we went to a lime burner near the fish oil vats… . A long file of women carried buckets of seashells on their heads to dump them in a heap outside a lone, low hut, which had smoke billowing up through the thatched roof. Inside a very old man, a mere skeleton, pedalled a wheel to force air into the charcoal fired tubs of burning shells.
Item by item, we assembled the ingredients in Kunhikoya’s recipe for building a stitched vessel: six augers; soft iron chisels for wood cutting; a hank of flax rope, purpose unknown; four large crowbars, two sledge hammers; an old-fashioned beam balance scale, several large boxes of assorted tools. The only items I was utterly unable to find were the tails of six stingray fish. (The Laccadive islanders were so isolated that they used the rough tails of rayfish instead of wood rasps). I got the metal files to do the same job. (pp. 41-43)
[At Sur] the place I had picked to build this new ship was no more than a slightly raised mound on the foreshore. It was one of three possible building sites that I had noted as I walked along the beach, and I was not surprised to be told that each of the three sites was exactly where the Suri shipbuilders had built their largest ships in the old days. The particular site I chose had only one major disadvantage: it flooded during the high spring tides. In the old days this had not mattered--the original shipwrights would simply have waited until the tides eased, and the gone back to work. But I could not afford even a day’s lost work. (p. 51)
The 52-foot long keel piece was raised on wooden blocks buried into the gravel … Then I called together Hoodaid and the two senior Indian shipwrights to discuss Colin Mudie’s lines plans of the ship. Normally, of course, neither Hoodaid nor the greenshirts (carpenters) would have used any drawings for building a ship, they worked only from their experience and by eye… . One of the greenshirts not only understood Colin’s drawings, but could translate them into the practical necessities of sewing a ship together. (p. 52)
The senior ropeworker divided his men into pairs, an inside man and an outside man. Each pair worked at passing a stand of the finest quality coir cord out through a hole in the plank, back through the opposite in the keel, round the python, and out again. There the outside man took a turn of the cord around his lever of stout wood, put his feet against the hull, leaned back and hauled the string as tight as he could. On the inside, his partner tapped on the string to help it tighten. The string grew tighter and tighter … until it could compress no more. The stitch was temporarily locked with a light wooden peg, and then the whole process began all over again with the next pair of holes. (p. 56)
The carpentry for the ship was as remarkable as the stitching. The Arab shipwrights, led by Hoodaid, were responsible for preparing the main frames of the vessel. They sat in the shade of a canvas awning chopping razor-sharp adzes against the 6-inch thick baulks of timber which had been marked out for the frames. As always they worked entirely by eye, in a happy carefree manner. It was a complete contrast to the greenshirts. Inside the shed of palm which we had erected to give shade around the hull, the greenshirt carpenters worked with a frenzy that it was difficult to imagine possible in the blazing heat. Their tools were hammer and chisel. Whether cutting a foot-thick lump of timber to size, or shaping the finest sliver of wood for a delicate joint, 90 per cent of the greenshirts’ work was done with hammer and chisel; only very reluctantly did they pick up a saw or a plane. The soft iron chisel was their tool, and with it they could work wonders. They could carve a plank into delicate curves, or they could shape the 60-foot spar into a taper as if it had been turned on a giant lathe. They were craftsmen whose original caste in India had been carpenters. Their fathers, grandfathers and great-grandfathers, and untold generations before that, had been carpenters.
The accuracy expected of the carpenters was extraordinary. Because the hull was being stitched together, it could not be caulked; that is, it would not be possible to stuff filling material into any small cracks between the planks before the ship was launched, as is the normal practice when building large wooden ships. The action of hammering in a filling material would merely stretch the stitching and force the planks wider apart. So the hull of the new ship had to be made a perfect shell before it was ever put into the water. This meant placing planks edge to edge, without even a hairline crack, along a length as much as 80 feet. It was an achievement which some European engineers who came to visit the worksite considered virtually impossible… . To achieve the required accuracy, each plank was fitted into place at least three times before it was finally stitched… . Only when the two faces matched perfectly would Mohamed permit the final phase: a thin coating of melted tree gum was painted on both faces of the wood, and a single strip of light muslin patted down onto the tacky resin so that it would be sandwiched between the planks when they were pressed together ready for stitching. As a last check, Mohamed would then take the protruding edge of the muslin strip, and give it a sharp tug. If the muslin slipped, he would order the job to be done again. A visiting engineer calculated that this work demanded an accuracy of better than 1/64 inch along the full length of the plank.
The penalty for this exquisite care was paid in the number of hours required to build the ship. Stitching a vessel together was perhaps two or three times slower than conventional shipbuilding using nails. (pp. 57-59)
The ribs, too, were stitched into place so that they could flex and slide against the skin of the vessel. A great crossbeam was placed across the ship to take the weight of the mast; the deck was laid on its beams.
I estimated that we had drilled more than 20,000 holes in the planking, and if these holes were not pegged properly the ship would leak like a huge sieve. On the outside of the hull the holes were blocked up with a sticky putty made of molten tree gum mixed with pounded seashells and rolled out on a board to the consistency of pastry. Finally the Agatti men climbed back inside the hull. Tins of vegetable oil were lowered down to them, and using mops and brushes they swabbed oil on to the stitching of the pythons. The coconut fibre soaked up the oil.
In the final week before launch we applied a coat of anti-fouling to the outside of the hull to protect it from being attacked and eaten by shipworms. The anti-fouling was strictly traditional, a coating of lime mixed with mutton fat and smeared on by hand. (p. 68)
[At the time of launch] the vessel seemed immense, towering over the sand, a monument to the skill of the men who had built her, 140 tons of raw timber turned into a single, elegant artefact, every joint and stitch dedicated towards her sole function of harmonizing with the sea.
We strapped a cradle under the hull, knocked away the keel blocks, and shackled up a tractor to tow our creation to the water’s edge. Under the skids of the cradle we laid the last of our timber from India, greased with mutton fat. The tractor’s engines revved up, and took up the slack. With a loud twang, the steel towrope snapped. We tried again, and again the two parted. We tried again and again, with heavier cable, with levers from astern, and with telegraph poles tucked under each side of the ship and fifteen greenshirts dangling from them like monkeys, in an attempt to unstick the hull. But the ship would not budge--she was immovable… . We were trying to drag her uphill. There was only one choice--we had to cut away the gravel platform and remove enough earth to make a downhill slope for the vessel… . At last the tide rose to its peak. Standing on the deck of the new ship I gave a signal to the navy men and they began to haul. The greenshirts roared out their work chant, and gave a tremendous heave. Looking astern, I saw the shore sway: the ship was moving. Gently and sweetly she eased out into the water. She was afloat. As she moved into the channel I heard whoops of triumph and there in the shallows were the greenshirts, capering and hallooing. They were ecstatic… . We hauled the ship out to the mooring buoy in midstream, cleared away the cradle, and there was a wonderful moment. We went down below deck and inspected the hull. Together we checked the bilge. A trickle of water was coming in, a trickle that would stop as soon as the wood soaked and swelled. (p. 69)
My vessel was alive. [With a crew of thirty men], to build her had taken not three years, nor sixteen months as had been prophesied, but just 165 days. (p. 72)
As designed, Sohar had a nominal hull length of 80 feet, a beam of 20 feet 4 inches, and a waterline length of 63 feet. Her designed draught was 6 feet, with a sail area of 2900 square feet, arranged as jib 370 square feet, main 1625 square feet, and mizzen 815 square feet… .
The first set of sails were made of 18-oz, No. 3 quality cotton canvas, handsewn from strips 24 inches wide, and edge-roped. These sails were replaced in India with larger sails (the mainsail was increased to over 2000 square feet) made of 22-oz and 24-oz cotton canvas in yard-wide bolts. A third mainsail of approximately 1800 square feet was sewn by Minicoy islanders and proved very satisfactory during the last week’s run up the South china Sea. The sail was made of 20-oz canvas, and from 18-inch wide strips… .
Each rib of the ship actually came in five independent pieces which could work separately. Two main cross beams supported the main mast partner on either side, and took the weight of the 61-foot forward-sloping main mast, shaped from a single tree trunk. The 46-foot mizzen mast stood vertically. Deck planking was 21/4 inches thick. Ballast was 15 tons… .
The 75-foot mainspar of poon wood came in three overlapping sections. When this spar broke in the Indian Ocean, its replacement (timber unknown) was increased to 81 feet to allow more variation in setting the bigger mainsails. Similarly the original jib boom, projecting 11 feet, was increased in Beypore to 16 feet to give more headsail… .
The blocks for Sohar, including the huge lower main block which stood chest-high to a grown man, were all hand-carved from solid pieces of timber, with wooden wheels and wooden pins. The rigging specification was very precise and ranged from 8-inch circumference rope for the main halyard to 2-inch rope for the lighter stays. All stays were running stays. Sohar was first rigged with coconut rope, but this was partially replaced with manila rope as the voyage progressed and the vessel reached countries where manila rope was available. (pp. 235-239)
[Quoted from Tim Severin, The Sindbad Voyage, New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1982] [For more excerpts see the commentaries on 1 Nephi 18:6; 18:8; 18:12; 18:13]
1 Nephi 17:8 Thou shalt construct a ship ([Illustration] Sohar: Sail and Rigging Plan. Sohar: Deck Plans [Tim Severin, The Sindbad Voyage, New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1982, pp. 236-237]
1 Nephi 17:8 Thou shalt construct a ship ([Illustration] Launch ceremony for the ship, named Sohar at the Sultaln‘s request in honour of Oman’s ancient port and reputed home of Sindbad the Sailor. Photograph by Bruce Foster. [Tim Severin, The Sindbad Voyage, New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1982, 64-65]