According to Randall Spackman, the Jaredite record describes the barges as "light upon the water, even like unto the lightness of a fowl upon the water" (Ether 2:16). For a hull to be "light upon the water" indicates that the boat had a shallow draft. The barges sat on the water rather than in it. This type of displacement pattern is typical of vessels with wide flat bottoms. . . . It might be well and good to have a shallow draft, but how do you get a wide barge to slip through the water as efficiently as possible, or with the "lightness of a fowl upon the water"? In the western world, the mould of the hull was patterned after a fish, with the greatest fullness towards the bow or the front. However, in East Asia, the hull was molded after the outline of a swimming bird, with the widest part of the boat towards the stern or towards the rear. The first European to observe and write about this difference was Admiral Paris in 1840: "For our best hulls we have taken the fishes as models, always larger at the cephalic end, but the Chinese, who also copied Nature, imitated the palmipeds, which float with the greatest breadth behind . . . In this they were acute, for aquatic birds, like boats, float between the two media of air and water, while fish swim only in the latter." [Randall P. Spackman, The Jaredite Journey to America, pp. 69-71, unpublished]
“They Were Light Upon the Water”
The barges are described as being "light upon the water" (Ether 2:16). According to Paul Hedengren, this is probably referring to draft, the nautical term for how far into the water a floating object extends. Any object settles in water until the weight of the water it displaces is equal to the weight of the object. If it cannot displace water equal to its weight, it sinks. Since the object will settle until it displaces water equal in weight to the vessel's weight, the wider and flatter the bottom of a vessel, the lighter upon the water it will float.
Sitting light upon the water has two effects on a vessel. First it makes it less sensitive to currents in the water, since there is less surface for the water to push on. Second it makes it more sensitive to wind, since there is more surface for the wind to push on.
In heavy seas, besides being watertight, a vessel should be able to avoid rolling, either end over end or sideways. The design of the Jaredite barges may have made them less susceptible to some common causes of rolling in small sailing vessels. The end over end roll may be caused by racing down the face of a high wave and burying the bow of the craft in the water at the bottom. Before the buoyancy can lift the bow, the stern may be lifted up and over the bow by the following wave. If a boat is light upon the water, with peaked ends, it is less likely to plant the bow deep enough to allow the stern to be pivoted over it.
In regard to lateral rolling, although there is no statement in the text about whether the barges were self-righting, the weight of secured supplies plus any secured ballast may have made the barge self righting. Had it not been, it certainly would not have been a voyage conducive to singing of God's praises during severe tempests as the text says occurred (see Ether 6:9). [Paul Hedengren, The Land of Lehi: Further Evidence for the Book of Mormon, pp. 78-79]