NOAH’S
ARK
THE NAVIGATION OF
By Rodger C. Young
BIBLE & SPADE 39.1 (2026) 21
the second week of December 1959, Oxford University dismissed for a six-week Christmas
break. is was a time when students were expected to do some studying—at home for the
students from the British Isles, but elsewhere for those of us who came from abroad. Airplane
travel at that time was expensive, so we Americans took the long break as an occasion to use
the relatively cheap, and sometimes free (hitchhiking) travel modes to explore Europe. I chose
to spend the time in Norway. Consequently, while still in Oxford I purchased a ticket for pas-
sage on a Norwegian passenger ship that was to depart from Newcastle on Britain’s east coast, with destination
Oslo. Little did I know that I was about to experience the most violent storm for the past two or three decades on
the North Atlantic, a region known for the severity of its storms.
e Norwegian ship was pleasant, especially in its smorgasbord meals that featured many varieties of sh and
cheese, all prepared very nicely and quite a contrast to the drab meals for which the British are famous or infamous
throughout Europe. I particularly took a fondness for gjetost—goat cheese—although all the choices were interest-
ing. But then the storm came, and it was a good thing that not only the tables but also the chairs
were fastened to the oor. Soon the sumptuous smorgasbord had few enjoying it, for almost all
the passengers, and even some of the Norwegian sailors, became seasick because of the violence
of the ship’s motion. I did not feel seasick in the slightest, so I gured out various ways to expe-
rience what a great storm is like. One such activity was to start up the ladder-like stairs. You wait
until the ship starts to fall down from the crest of one of the giant waves. You become very light,
and you scoot, almost oat, up those stairs for a few seconds until the ship hits the trough at the
bottom between two massive waves, at which time you become very heavy and just hang on until
the next quasi free fall; then you nish your monkey-like scamper up the steps.
I went to the stern of the ship to watch the up-and-down motion and the waves. When the
ship rode over the top, I estimated that it was about 60 feet (18 m) down to the trough between
the waves—this included the distance I was raised because the ship’s bow was very much point-
ing downward and its stern was consequently lied up. e waves then would have been a good
30 feet (9 m) or more in height, which is considered the maximum for ocean storms, except in
the case of occasional superwaves. When the stern of the ship fell from the top and sank heavily
into the sea, I leaned over the rail and could almost touch the water. All this time the wind was
blowing ercely, and it was raining, then snowing,
before we entered Oslo Fjord. At one point I was on
the side of the ship when the wind, in its violence,
shied to our starboard side and tore the top o a
massive wave, drenching both the side of the ship
and me.
During the storm the ship was going very slowly—
so slowly that it took an extra day and a half to reach
Oslo, a distance of about 600 miles (966 km). One of
the sailors explained to me why the ship was moving
at such a slow speed. e captain had decided that
slowness was necessary if we were to survive this
storm. (I later learned that not all ships had survived
it.) e important thing, the sailor said, was to keep
the ship pointed into the waves. If we turned sideways
to them, the force of the waves could cause us to roll
over (capsize). Had that happened, you wouldn’t be reading this. e slowness of the ship was
because the captain was afraid that, as the stern was lied up when we started down the far side of
the wave, the propellor might come out of the water. If the propellor was turning too fast, it might
spin o, and then we would no longer be able to prevent turning sideways, and thus capsizing.
Maybe one reason I went through this storm was so that I could appreciate what “a few, that is,
eight persons” (1 Pet 3:20), and the animals on the ark, experienced during the great ood of Noah’s
day. In what follows, I will apply what I learned from that experience to an explanation of the design
principles of Noah’s ark. Since I have not seen much literature that deals with the subject of the navi-
gational stability of the ark, at least not to the degree that I think it deserves, I am particularly inter-
ested in any feedback on these ideas, some of which I think have never been fully appreciated, and
certainly rarely discussed.
“Since I have not seen much
literature that deals with the
subject of the navigational
stability of the ark, at least
not to the degree that I think
it deserves, I am particularly
interested in any feedback
on these ideas, some of
which I think have never
been fully appreciated, and
certainly rarely discussed.”
22 BIBLE & SPADE 39.1 (2026)
How Would You Like Six Degrees of Freedom? Physics Is Fun
If you’ve taken a basic course in physics, you know that you already
have those six degrees of freedom. Also, anyone who has studied
the motion of ships, or who has learned about piloting an airplane,
is familiar with them. ey refer to the motion of an object, and
since you’re an object, they apply to you. e six degrees are
divided into two groups of three. e rst group, translational
degrees of freedom, refers to your motion in either a (1) forward/
backward, (2) le/right, or (3) up/down direction. e second
group refers to rotational motion. When an object like an airplane
pitches its nose up or down, it is exercising the rst kind of rota-
tional motion, called pitch. Pitch rotation may be thought of as
rotation about an axis going through the wings of the aircra. e
second kind of rotational motion is called roll. It’s the kind of
motion that you partake of when you roll over in bed. In that roll-
ing motion you are rotating about an axis that goes from your
head to your toes. In the case of an airplane or boat, the roll axis
can be thought of as extending from the nose to the tail (bow to
stern). e third kind of rotational motion, yaw, may be somewhat
less familiar, although it is well known to pilots and to all who are
responsible for the navigation of a ship. e yaw degree of free-
dom is observed when a person in a small boat or canoe paddles
on just one side with the intention of turning the bow of the vessel
to the le or right.
As a side note, the Wright brothers’ discovery of how to control
yaw in their ying machine is considered their greatest achieve-
ment. Yes, they also worked long and hard to get an engine that
was powerful enough, and also light enough, to pull the plane
through the air. But others were working on this too, since the
challenge was so obvious, and everyone knew that advances were
continually being made in engine technology. But everyone else
was on the wrong track in their approach to managing yaw. eir
thinking was dominated by the way that
ships control yaw—namely, by means of a
rudder. So others who were trying to build
ying machines put rudders on their inven-
tion, thinking that this was the answer to
controlling yaw, and if you can’t control
yaw, you can’t navigate properly. e Wright
brothers’ breakthrough was when they real-
ized that the way to control yaw is to manip-
ulate the camber of the wings so that the
plane’s wings initiate a roll, something
you’ve enjoyed every time the plane you
were in turned to the right or le and the
view through your window became either
up to the sky or down to the ground. Once
the roll is initiated, the pilot completes the
“yaw” (change of direction) maneuver by
what is actually a pitch operation. e
Wright brothers patented this means of
accomplishing yaw, and for many years
everyone who built airplanes was required
to recognize their patent, even though the
roll-pitch combination to accomplish yaw could be initiated by
ailerons in the wings rather than the Wrights’ method of changing
the wings’ camber.
In that storm on the North Atlantic, the captain and navigator’s
control of the roll degree of freedom became all-important. Noth-
ing could be done about the ship’s pitch; as long as we were headed
into the 30-foot/9-meter (or more) waves, we were going to have
the extreme motions up and down that I thought were best
observed from the stern—60 feet (18 m) up, down, and then up
again in just a few seconds. However, everything possible was
being done to control yaw, because, if the ship yawed to the right
or le and thus presented its side to the oncoming waves, we
would have experienced the second rotational degree of freedom,
roll, in a disastrous manner, and that would have been the end of
all of us. Yaw was kept under control by the ship’s rudder, as long
as the ship’s motion through the water was fast enough to make
the rudder eective.
Control of Yaw and Roll Was Necessary for Noah’s Ark
For the inhabitants of the ark, controlling the translational degrees
of freedom was of no importance. It mattered little to them
whether they were going east or west, north or south, because,
once the ood waters covered the earth, there was nowhere to go.
Every possible destination was covered by H2O. (Of course, it
would have been inconvenient if they found themselves in the
middle of the Atlantic or Pacic when the ood waters subsided.)
For the third type of translational motion, the only up/down
motion of which the ark was capable was going up and down with
the waves.
e ark needed some means of controlling yaw; otherwise the
waves would have caused uncontrollable roll during the ark’s year-
long voyage. And there would have been waves, possibly large
ones, because Genesis 8:1 mentions a wind during the time of the
ood’s abatement. Where there is wind and a large enough expanse
of water, there will be waves. Questions of where the water of the
ree rotational degrees of freedom. Credit: Glenn Research Center,
NASA, https://www1.grc.nasa.gov/beginners-guide-to-aeronautics
/aircra-rotations/ (Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain).
BIBLE & SPADE 39.1 (2026) 23
ood went, though interesting, will not be discussed here. What
will be discussed is whether some means of controlling yaw was
built into the ark’s design. Without such control, the vessel would
have turned sideways to the oncoming waves, resulting in a very
unstable situation.
e Answers in Genesis designers of the magnicent ark
replica in Kentucky recognized this need. eir solution
was to assume that yaw could be avoided, or at least con-
trolled, by means of a sail. It could not be a fabric sail, since
the eight-person crew of the ark would not have been su-
cient to control a sail of the required size. eir website
explains:
A bow-mounted rigid “sail” or n demonstrated a signif-
icant steering eect. e optimum design would have the
feature as far forward as possible (maximizing the yaw-
ing motion arm), relatively high (increasing the wind
velocity and away from wave-induced air turbulence),
high enough to avoid contact with waves, and as large as possi-
ble without compromising stability (wind heeling motion).1
Consequently, the Kentucky ark has a wooden sail on its bow.
By rsthand experience, I can say that the wooden sail of the
Kentucky ark would not be eective in controlling yaw. It would
actually increase the yaw when a sudden change of wind direction
occurred, such as was the case with the drenching I experienced
when the wind suddenly switched direction and tore o the top of
a massive wave many years ago in the North Atlantic. When the
wind suddenly switched and came crosswise to Noah’s ark, any
wooden “sail” would turn the vessel broadside to the waves
(assuming it previously was pointed into them). e result would
be a tendency to roll, a motion that could be large enough to result
in the ship capsizing. A friend of
mine who is an experienced
yachtsman has gone through
large storms on the Atlantic,
and he arms that a wooden
sail in a xed position would be
a disaster in a high or even
moderate wind.
Ship encountering a moderate storm at sea. Photo from Peter Colón, “God
Was in Our Boat,” Israel My Glory, July/August 2011, https://israelmyglory
.org/article/god-was-in-our-boat/.
Other than the wooden “sail,” the ark replica at the Ark Encounter
in Kentucky is excellently designed. Photo by Kaleeb18 (Wikimedia
Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0).
“What will be
discussed is
whether some
means of
controlling yaw
was built into the
ark’s design.”
24 BIBLE & SPADE 39.1 (2026)
The Use of Drogues to Control Yaw, and
Therefore Also Roll
For the ark, a rudder could not be used to con-
trol yaw because rudders are only eective if the
ship is moving at a suitable speed through the
water. e ark, having no propulsion system of
its own, was driven by the wind and, to a lesser
extent, by the movement of water (i.e., waves).
Waves can provide some translational move-
ment to objects, but in general anything from
foam to supertankers will mostly ride over waves
and not travel with them.
ere is, however, a way to control a ship’s
yaw known to mariners. It is by means of a
drogue, also called a sea anchor. In modern
ships and yachts, sea anchors usually look like a
small parachute. Just as the familiar aerial parachute provides
resistance to the natural movement of the parachutist (down-
ward), a drogue/sea anchor is designed to oer resistance to the
natural movement of a yacht or ship being driven by the wind or
waves. For that purpose, it is important that the drogue be con-
nected (to something sturdy!) on the bow of the ship. Since the
force of the wind or waves will cause the vessel to move through
the water, the drogue, by its drag or resistance, will then keep the
bow pointed into the oncoming wind and waves. is minimizes
the yaw and thus avoids, hopefully, any catastrophic roll. A mod-
ern skipper has expressed appreciation for the eectiveness of
such a drogue in keeping his cra pointed into the waves:
Aer deployment [of a sea anchor] my yawl [a two-masted sail-
ing boat] lay bow-to the wind and waves with very little yawing.
With 400 feet of rode there was absolutely no shock loading. My
boat rode like a duck, up and over each wave, always nose to the
wind. Altogether a very pleasant, safe, and secure feeling.2
is is what was needed for Noah’s ark: Its bow needed to main-
tain its position pointed into the wind and waves, hopefully to
provide “a very pleasant, safe, and secure feeling” for all aboard.
Ancient drogues did not resemble the modern parachute-type
drogue. Instead, they were heavy pieces of rock through which a
hole had been bored in order to hold a rope that would be attached
to the bow of the ship. e drogue was not lowered into the water
until its use became essential, which normally would only be in
the emergency of being unable, by normal sailing methods, to
keep the prow pointed into the oncoming waves. Such drogues
have been found on the seaoor of the Mediterranean and are on
display in various museums of the region.
Surprising Development: The Ark’s Drogues Have Been
Found
In eastern Turkey, close to the Iranian border, there are numerous
large rocks protruding out of or lying on the ground, with holes
drilled in the top. is area, in ancient times, was called Ararat
(Urartu in ancient Assyrian inscriptions; Armenia from the fourth
century BC until the early 20th century AD). Some of these dis-
tinctive rocks have been moved to an old Armenian cemetery for
use as grave markers. e rocks resemble the anchor stones that
were used on ships in classical times. However, the drogues found
in the Ararat region are far larger than anything found in the Med-
iterranean. Exact measurements of the Ararat drogues are unavail-
able, but to give a rough idea of their size, we shall use 7 feet
(2.1 m) in height, 4 feet (1.2 m) in width, and 1 foot (0.3 m) in
thickness as a conjectured average.3 According to Andrew Jones,
who has photographed the drogues in situ, 26 such objects have
been found in the area about 30 miles (48 km) west of the tradi-
tional Mount Ararat.4 e Turkish name for this dormant volcano
is Agri Dagh; the name Mount Ararat has been applied to the
mountain only in fairly recent times, and the Bible says that the
ark came to rest “on the mountains of Ararat” (Gen 8:4), not on
any mountain called “Ararat.”
e stones/drogues are composed of basalt. We can estimate
their weight. Given the rough dimensions just estimated, the vol-
ume of the postulated average stone can be approximately deter-
mined as 7ʹ × 4ʹ × 1ʹ = 28 cubic feet (0.79 m3). e density of basalt
is around 180 pounds per cubic foot (ca. 2,900 kg/m3). e weight
of the presumed average drogue would therefore be approximately
5,040 pounds (2,286 kg), or 2.52 tons. e aggregate weight of 26
such anchor stones would be about 65.5 tons. In the water, they
would “weigh” less according to the amount of water displaced;
the roughly estimated 728 cubic feet (20.6 m3) of water displaced
by the 26 drogues would weigh about 45,427 pounds (20,605 kg),
or 22.7 tons (the density of water being around 62.4 lb./.3). is
would reduce the eective weight of the 26 drogues in the water
from 65.5 tons to about 42.8 tons.
But, assuming for the present that these are the actual drogues
used by Noah’s ark, why are there so many of them? e following
discussion will explore the possibility that they could have been
used for purposes other than keeping the bow of the ship pointed
into the waves (the usual function of drogues, both ancient and
modern). Specically, they could have served as ballast external to
the ship, and also as counterweights to reduce the up-and-down
motion of the ship (pitch).
Modern sea anchor (drogue). Photo by Ed Dunens (Wikimedia Commons,
CC BY 2.0).
BIBLE & SPADE 39.1 (2026) 25
Buoyancy and Ballast
Is there any explanation of why such a massive amount of weight—
estimated above at roughly 65.5 tons—would be used in the
drogue stones of Noah’s ark? ere appear to be two reasons: (1)
the necessity of using more than one drogue to control the ship’s
direction, due to the immense size of the ark, and (2) the need to
counteract the ark’s buoyancy. Buoyancy is the upward force that a
liquid applies to any object immersed in, or partially immersed in,
the liquid. Calculation of the buoyancy force is straightforward: It
is the weight of the liquid displaced by the object in the liquid.
What was the buoyancy of the ark? Interestingly, the ark’s
dimensions, as given in Genesis 6:15, are in the same ratio of
length/width/height as a modern oceangoing vessel of approxi-
mately the same size. is fact in itself should give pause to skep-
tics who maintain that the ood story is entirely myth. e biblical
description of the ark contrasts with the later, corrupted versions
of the ood story, in which the shape and dimensions of the vessel
that survived the ood, if given, are always nautically impossible.
As indicated, in order to calculate the buoyant force acting on
the ark, it is necessary to estimate the volume of water the ark dis-
placed when fully aoat. In doing such a calculation, we shall use
the dimensions of the ark as calculated by the engineers associated
with the Ark Encounter museum in Kentucky. ese designers
wisely used the length of the ancient Egyptian (and also early Mes-
opotamian) cubit, 20.6 inches (52.3 cm), instead of the later cubit
of 18 inches (45.7 cm). Examples of this earlier, longer cubit are
found in museums in Egypt and at archaeological sites in Mesopo-
tamia. With the ark’s dimensions at 300 × 50 × 30 cubits, using the
more ancient cubit results in a length of 515 feet (157 m), a width
of 86 feet (26 m), and a height, from keel to top of the main deck,
of 51.5 feet (15.7 m). Another sensible choice by the designers of
the Kentucky ark was to assume that the bow would be shaped like
the bow of any modern large oceangoing vessel—that is, it would
be narrowed down to a rather sharp shape in order to reduce the
stress of impact with an oncoming wave, in contrast to the stron-
ger and more sudden force that a square bow would present to the
waves.
Although a lot of buoyancy might seem like a good thing—and
it is for small cras like canoes or rowboats—too much buoyancy
is destabilizing for a large oceangoing vessel. erefore oceango-
ing ships, both ancient and modern, used some form of weight
(ballast) in the bottom of the ship to overcome excessive buoy-
ancy, although for something like an oil tanker, the oil itself can
provide the needed ballast weight. An example of stones used as
ballast has been found in the remains of a shipwreck in the Medi-
terranean that is dated to about 1100 BC.5
e ark, then, would have had a problem with buoyancy, and
especially since it was made of the mysterious “gopher” wood. is
suggests that something must have been done to overcome the
excessive buoyancy that would make the ship unstable. We can get
a fairly accurate estimate of the magnitude of the buoyant force on
the ark based on the reasonable shape of the ark replica in Ken-
tucky, including the narrowing of the front part of the ship in
order to better meet the oncoming waves. We shall also assume
that the dra of the ship was one-half the height of the main
deck—that is, 15 cubits (26 feet [7.9 m]). When the calculation is
done using these gures, the ark must have displaced approxi-
mately 1,111,000 cubic feet (31,460 m3) of water, which would give
an upward force (buoyancy) of 69 million pounds, or 34,500 tons.
is upward force must be counterbalanced if the ark was to attain
the estimated 26 feet (7.9 m) of dra needed to give it stability.
Since it seems unlikely that the ark plus its contents could have
provided all this vast weight (the interior could not be densely
packed as in a modern oil tanker), it is reasonable to assume that
some sort of ballast was required to achieve the estimated opti-
mum dra. is provides a possible explanation of the postulated
aggregate total of 65.5 tons of drogue stones that have been found
in the Ararat region: Some of these drogue stones were used not
just to keep the ark pointed into the waves, but as a form of ballast,
external to the ship. is, of course, would be impracticable for
any ship that was trying to move through the water by sail power
or oar power. e ark, however, was unique among all ancient
ships in that it wasn’t designed to go anywhere; the main design
purpose of the ark was just to stay aoat, and to minimize the eect
of the waves on the comfort of its human and animal passengers.
Ancient drogues found in the Mediterranean. Photo by JoséM. Ciordia
(Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0).
26 BIBLE & SPADE 39.1 (2026)
How the drogue/ballast stones accomplished this will be
addressed in a later section. e estimated 65.5 tons from the 26
drogue stones would be part of the required weight necessary to
counteract to a suitable degree the buoyancy problem of the ark. It
is assumed here that these weights would all have been attached to
the front of the ark, while ordinary ballast (stones or slag) would
have been used inside the ship in the stern. Some researchers have
proposed that the drogues found in the Ararat region could have
been attached to the sides, or even to the keel, of the ark, but such
arrangements would defeat the essential requirement of keeping
the bow pointed into the oncoming waves. Consequently, my thesis
is that all were attached to the general area of the bow using ropes
of various lengths, requiring a very strong structure at the bow to
support weights of this magnitude. Also, there was no need for any
mechanism to lower the drogues into the water, as will be explained
momentarily.
Attempts to Explain Away These Remarkable Stones
If these man-craed rough objects in eastern Turkey are not
anchor stones, then what else could they be? Any alternate theory
would need to explain the hole in the top. One imaginative
explainer-away says that the holes were for sighting; aligning two
such stones would allow the viewer to sight onto some distant
object (what object?) à la Stonehenge.6 In order to further discredit
the idea that these could be the ark’s drogue anchors, it is stated
that there is no basalt in Mesopotamia, where Noah is presumed
to have lived before the ood.7 But nothing in the book of Genesis
indicates that Noah and his family lived in Mesopotamia, and the
long lifespans, and assumed comparably long periods of fertility,
of the prediluvian patriarchs and their wives imply that Adam’s
descendants numbered in the millions if not billions before the
ood, which would require expansion far beyond the original area
of settlement east of Eden (Gen 3:24).
An equally improbable explanation is that the stones were only
grave markers, as mentioned. It is only natural that many would
nd these objects as ready-made grave markers, but this does not
explain why most of them are not found at a grave site, while there
would have been a natural tendency to relocate them to the Arme-
nian cemetery for just such a use. Others have objected that the
stones are of much too late a date to be associated with the ark,
since Christian crosses, in the Roman and also the Byzantine style,
have been found on some of them. But this just testies to the
universal human tendency to add grati to any open at surface,
and the drogue anchors that are still in the ground or only recently
excavated are without grati. Also, the styles of the crosses indi-
cate dierent time periods, separated by centuries, in which the
Christian grati were made; they are of no more use in dating the
drogues than is the presence of a bullet mark on one of them.
ere is really no other satisfactory explanation for what these
objects are if they are not drogue anchors for a massive boat. Yet
they are found at altitudes ranging between 6,000 and 7,000 feet
(1,829 and 2,134 m), about 170 miles (274 km) from the nearest
large body of water (the Black Sea), and about 750 miles (1,207 km)
from the Mediterranean. For those who do not allow physical and
scientic evidence of any type to contradict their a priori anti-Bible
prejudice, it must be concluded that there is some reason other
than logical, rational thinking that motivates their unwillingness
to accept the results of archaeological and scientic data that sup-
port the Bible’s account of a great, and universal, ood.
Use of Drogues to Protect the Ark at the Beginning of the
Flood
Consider another aspect of the drogues. ey were never taken
aboard the ark. When the ark was under construction, they would
have been laid out in front of the ark, on the ground, with ropes of
dierent lengths attached to them. When the rain began, the ark
faced an immediate danger: As soon as the water became deep
Largest of the drogue stones discovered in eastern Turkey. Some of them,
like this one, bear engraved crosses from dierent centuries of the Christian
era, suggesting that they may have been regarded as objects with religious
signicance. Photo courtesy of Andrew Jones of NoahsArkScans.com.
BIBLE & SPADE 39.1 (2026) 27
enough to oat the vessel, it would begin to dri. Unless the ark
was built on the top of a hill (unlikely, although see the Altaic folk-
lore below), when this dri began there would be objects nearby,
possibly hills, buildings, or trees. Initially, some of these objects
would still be protruding above the water, and there would be
many others in the area that were not yet submerged as deep as the
assumed 26-foot (7.9-m) dra of the vessel. If the wooden hull
struck any of these when the ark rst started to dri, there would
be disaster. It was therefore necessary that the vessel be con-
strained by conventional anchors until the water covered all the
surrounding territory, including its trees and rocky protrusions, to
a depth of at least 26 feet (7.9 m). e several drogues attached to
the front of the ship would have accomplished this by acting like
conventional anchors when the oodwaters rst began to rise. e
last drogue to li o the earth’s surface, thus ceasing to act as a
conventional seaoor anchor and starting to act like a true sea
anchor, may have had a rope a few hundred feet long.
Unlike conventional drogues, whether ancient or modern, the
ark’s drogues seemingly had four purposes: (1) to act as seaoor
anchors at the start of the ood, to keep the ark from driing into
nearby objects; (2) then to act as sea anchors (drogues proper) to
keep the ship’s prow pointed into the waves; (3) to serve as ballast
for the front part of the ship, thereby freeing up space in the front
of the ship that would otherwise be occupied by regular ballast
material such as boulders; (4) to moderate the ark’s pitch (see next
section).
I nd this a wonderful example of ingenuity in design. Notice
also that, once the drogues were attached with ropes to some
sturdy structure at the prow of the ark before the ood, there
would be no need to service them in any way until it came time to
loose them from the ark as the oodwaters receded and the
drogues began to drag on the earth’s surface. Such freeing from the
drogues would have been accomplished by the ship’s crew by
means of a sharp saw or axe—a very simple task. e drogues with
the longest ropes would have been cut o rst, and then the others
successively as they dragged on the bottom.
For those willing to separate the wheat from the cha in ancient
testimonies, as opposed to those who regard everything in the
worldwide accounts of the ood as entirely legendary ction,
there is a somewhat distorted remembrance of these drogue
anchors, and their attached ropes, in the story of the ood given
by the Altaic people of central Asia:
Up to the time when the ood (jaik) hid all the earth, Tengys
(Sea) was lord over the earth. During his rule there lived a man
called Nama, a good man, whom Ülgen commanded to build
an ark (kerep). Nama, who had three sons, Sozun-uul, Sar-uul,
and Balyks, was already failing of sight and therefore le the
building of the ark to his sons. When the ark, which was built
on a mountain, was completed, Nama told his sons to hang
from its corners and walls eight cables of eighty fathoms
each. . . . Aer this had been done, Nama entered the ark, tak-
ing with him his family and the various animals and birds
which, threatened by the rising waters, gathered around him.
Seven days later the cables attached to the earth gave way and
the ark dried free.8
Surprise Benefit: The Drogues Would Moderate Pitch
ere are three reasons why seagoing ships have a sharp prow. e
rst is eciency. Streamlining enables vehicles (cars, planes, ships)
to move through water or air faster and with less expenditure of
energy. e second reason is safety. e ship is less likely to be
damaged by the force of the waves or any extreme pitching if the
prow can slice into the waves, reducing the pitch and the shock of
the waves. e third reason is comfort of the passengers and crew.
A sharp prow, as it slices into the wave, will allow the ship to travel
through the wave with less raising of its front and subsequent low-
ering, the “pitch” discussed at the beginning of this article. e
greater the pitch, the more strain not only on the structural mem-
bers of the ship but also on the people inside.
e rst consideration, eciency, was not a design principle for
the ark. No fuel was being expended, and there was no hurry to go
anywhere. e ark was unlike most ships built before or since in
that it was not designed to convey people or things from one place
to another. It was only designed to stay aoat, and its ultimate des-
tination was not under the control of its crew.
e second and third principles regarding the ship’s prow, how-
ever, were very much designed into the ark. Here the sharp prow
and the drogue anchors played a signicant role. As explained, the
sharp prow would naturally reduce the pitch, but the drogue
anchors also served this purpose: An oncoming wave, in order to
elevate the front of the ship, would have to also raise up all the
drogue anchors, which were situated at depths in the water deter-
mined by their rope lengths. ese anchors oered three types of
resistance to the upward motion of the prow: their weight, their
inertia, and the liquid or viscous friction with the water.
e ark was thus eminently designed for safety and for the
comfort of its human and animal passengers. Horses and cows,
and presumably other large animals, can panic if they are on a ship
when the ocean gets rough. erefore it was important to reduce
the ship’s pitch motion as much as possible. As estimated earlier, if
there were 26 drogue anchors, each averaging about 2.52 tons, that
means there were approximately 65.5 tons of deadweight that
must have been overcome to raise the bow, just in the drogue
anchors alone. Although the eective weight of the anchors in use
both as drogues and as ballast for the front part of the ship would
be less because of their immersion in water, it was not only their
weight but also their inertia that counteracted the liing force of
the waves, and their inertia was not reduced by their being
immersed in water. Also, they oered viscous friction equal to
many more tons of force in a direction against the upli presented
when meeting a wave. While the drogues served this double pur-
pose—navigational direction and ballast—it was not necessary
that they all be fastened to the exact frontal point of the bow. ey
could be spread a little bit along the side of the (presumably some-
what pointed) bow and still serve both functions. ey would not
be spread uniformly along the sides of the ship and even to the
stern; that would result in drogue forces working in all directions
and not just the one essential direction—namely, into the oncom-
ing waves.
is was a tremendous force that was exerted in opposition to
the force from waves to raise the prow. But what happened as the
28 BIBLE & SPADE 39.1 (2026)
if it does so without compromise to any of the functions it fullls. It
is even more remarkable when this can be done with a simple sys-
tem that requires little maintenance and has few moving parts,
reducing the likelihood of failure. e ark’s drogues had all of this.
ey are not as pretty as modern parachute-type drogues, but pret-
tiness was not a requirement. As crude as they might look to the
modern person who puts so much emphasis on appearance, the
drogues used on the ark represent a more brilliant engineering
accomplishment than their modern counterparts that indeed con-
trol yaw but do little to manage pitch. If the purposes of the drogues
in the ark’s design were as postulated in the present discussion, then
one can conclude that the design was brilliant, completely new and
creative, and eminently successful.
Apparently, what happened was that as the waters were reced-
ing, the lowest drogue anchor began scraping on the bottom.
Noah’s family then cut its hawser to release it. As they dried a
little further, the second-lowest anchor began to drag, and it was
released. By comparing the elevations where the drogues exist
now (except those displaced to the cemetery), it might be possible
to roughly determine the lengths of their various ropes.
A Scientific Test
Another avenue of research should be undertaken in this study of
the Ararat drogues. Geologists derive much of their information
about the Ice Age or Ice Ages from the study of erratic boulders.
ship passed over the crest and began to travel down the back part
of the wave? Here the pitch was downward, and according to the
presumption made above that the drogues were only attached to
the bow of the ark, there would not have been comparable drogues
on the stern to prevent it from rising and hence hinder the bow’s
downward motion.
Drogue anchors on the stern were not needed. As soon as the
prow started to sink down the backside of the wave, the tension on
the ropes leading to the drogue anchors diminished. Because of
the friction of these large stones in the water, they would not drop
in the depths as fast as the prow as it seesawed downward. Any
downward acceleration would automatically reduce the tension
on the ropes. In the extreme case of free fall,
the prow would not experience any downward
pull at all from its drogues. e tension on the
hawsers would relax as many tons of weight
were momentarily released from them. e
prow, freed to some extent from the full force
of the heavy weights, would experience the tre-
mendous upward thrust of the ship’s buoyancy,
and this buoyancy would counteract the
downward plunge of the bow. For a large wave,
the dierence in the eective buoyancy would
be large, and for a small wave the force would
be small. e inertial and viscosity eects of
the drogues would therefore be large when the
ark’s motion was large, and smaller when the
ark’s motion when coming down from a wave
was smaller. In both cases the smoothing-out
eect of the drogues would match, to some
extent, the amount of counter-eect needed to
minimize the ship’s pitch. Because all their
downward force was exerted on the prow of
the ship, the drogues had the advantage of
leverage when acting against the tendency of a
wave to li that end. Because of this leverage,
their weight was more eective in counteract-
ing upward motion than if the same weight
were distributed throughout the ship as part of
its ballast.
What has been described is a damping system in which correc-
tive forces were applied to reduce the seesawing of the ship as it
encountered rough seas. ese forces were applied automatically
and instantaneously. eir eect was to smooth the ride. I would
conjecture that the pitching motion of the ark was probably much
smoother than what any modern ship of comparable size would
experience going through similar seas. Even when modern sailing
ships use light drogues, these drogues are used mostly to limit yaw,
not pitch. e smoothness of the ark’s voyage was important in the
planning; comfort and safety were paramount design features of
the ark and its system of drogue anchors. e drogue anchors
therefore provided for managing the direction and motion of the
ship with no demands on the time or strength of the crew.
The Drogue Anchors Were Multipurpose
It is considered a mark of engineering excellence when one part of a
structure or apparatus can serve more than one purpose, especially
Illustration of how a stone drogue was attached to the prow of ancient
ships, to be released into the water only when neither sail nor oars could
keep the ship pointed into the oncoming waves. Drawing reproduced
from Enzo Angelucci and Attilio Cucari, Ships (Mondadori, 1975), 21.
Red oval added.
BIBLE & SPADE 39.1 (2026) 29
ese are stones that were carried by glaciers, or sometimes by
icebergs, far from their place of origin. By determining the min-
eral and chemical composition of the boulder, and comparing
with outcroppings of that rock type perhaps several hundred miles
away, it is possible to determine where the boulder came from and
how far the glacier moved before depositing it.
e rough-hewn drogue stones of the Ararat region are com-
posed of basalt. Basalt varies in its chemical composition in vari-
ous parts of the earth, and although the exact place of origin of a
given piece of basalt cannot be determined, its general locus can
be ascertained through chemical analysis—
whether it came from the Mid-Atlantic Ridge,
the Columbia Gorge formation, or some other
general area known to geologists who are qual-
ied in this kind of analysis. us the basalt of
the Columbia Gorge area in western North
America, which is usually quite black, diers
from the basalt of southern California, which
is of a light gray hue.
Interestingly, a chemical analysis of a chip
taken from one of the Ararat drogue stones has
already been done, and the sample’s chemical
composition is given in a journal article.9
Although the article’s abstract claims that
“anchor stones at Kazan (Arzap) are derived
from local andesite and not from Mesopota-
mia,” there is no comparison in the following
text with the chemistry of andesite/basalt in
the surrounding region. It is totally inconsistent when a scientic
article makes a claim in its abstract that is not supported in the
article’s text. Neither is there any evidence, biblical or otherwise,
that the ark was built in Mesopotamia. Since the cited article fails
to provide this essential evidence, the crucial comparison with the
andesite/basalt of the Ararat region remains to be done. Speci-
cally, comparison should be done with the basalt from eruptions
of the nearby dormant volcanoes, the largest of which, Agri Dagh
(Mount Ararat), last erupted in AD 1850. To be thorough, the
chemical composition of basalt from eruptions in earlier times
(lower strata) in the Ararat region should also be examined to take
into account the possibility that the chemical composition of the
underlying magma may have changed over the preceding centu-
ries and millennia. If the chemical composition of the drogues
cannot be matched with that of any of the basalt layers in the Ara-
rat region, that would be scientic verication that the drogues
were brought to the area from another
geological region. If this is indeed the
result of the scientic analysis, then it will
be interesting to see what alternatives are
produced by those whose a priori pre-
suppositions rule out the historicity of
the biblical account of the ood. How
would such skepticism explain how and
why someone would drag large basaltic
objects in the form of sea anchors—sea
anchors much too large for any conven-
tional ship—to a place high in the moun-
tains and far distant from any sea? Would
those who claim to be scientic in their
thinking be willing to accept the results
of this scientic experiment? And, for
those of us who believe in the historicity
of a worldwide ood, a chemical analysis
of the drogue stones might reveal the
general area where Noah and his family lived while building the
ark. ere is no reason to think that the ark mysteriously, aer
driing for a year, ended up in the exact same place where it was
constructed. •
Endnotes
1. Tim Lovett, “How Could the Ark Avoid Being Capsized?,” Answers
in Genesis, January 5, 2025, https://answersingenesis.org/noahs-ark
/how-could-ark-avoid-being-capsized/.
2. Testimonial quoted in Darrell Nicholson, “Sea Anchors & Drogues,”
Practical Sailor, updated March 11, 2020, https://www.practical-sailor
.com/sails-rigging-deckgear/sea-anchors-drogues/. e author of this
interesting web page on drogues introduces the topic with the statement,
“Sea anchors are as old as seafaring.”
3. My appreciation to Andrew Jones of NoahsArkScans.com, who,
at my request, took measurements of the aboveground portion of the
largest stone found. His measurements were 210 cm, height; 150 cm,
width; and 32 cm, thickness—or 6.9 × 4.9 × 1.05 feet (email message
to author, April 29, 2026). e buried portion of the stone would thus
make it more than 7 feet tall. Given the necessary imprecision because no
one has published exact measurements of these stones, we will use, as a
rough estimate, the dimensions of 7 feet (2.1m) tall, 4 feet (1.2m) wide,
and 1 foot (0.3m) thick—somewhat smaller than the largest stone—for
the size of the conjectured average stone. Jones’s research is in a dierent
area than what is covered in the present article, and his helpfulness in
providing measurements does not necessarily imply his agreement with
the conclusions presented herein.
4. Steven Law, “e Hunt for Noah’s Ark: Durupinar,” pt. 1, Pat-
terns of Evidence, April 10, 2026, https://www.patternsofevidence.com
/2026/04/10/the-hunt-for-noahs-ark-durupinar-part-1/.
5. Rossella Tercatin, “In First, ree Shipwrecks from Biblical Times
Uncovered o the Coast of Israel,” Times of Israel, October 8, 2025,
https://www.timesofisrael.com/in-first-three-shipwrecks-from-biblical
-times-uncovered-o-the-coast-of-israel/.
6. Anne Habermehl, “Decoding a World Navel ‘Visual Language’
rough Ideational Cognitive Archaeology: Further Comments,” Answers
Research Journal 17 (2024): 354.
7. Lorence Gene Collins and David Franklin Fasold, “Bogus ‘Noah’s
Ark’ from Turkey Exposed as a Common Geologic Structure,” Journal of
Geoscience Education 44, no.4 (1996): 441.
8. e Mythology of All Races, ed. Louis Herbert Gray and John Arnott
MacCulloch, vol. 4, Finno-Urgic, Siberian, by Uno Holmberg (Marshall
Jones, 1927), 364, https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.283531; em-
phasis added. e Altaic myth continues with various incidents that are
clearly fabulous, such as when Nama/Noah became very old, his wife
urged him to kill all the people and animals that were then inhabiting the
earth, upon which Nama killed his wife instead (Holmberg, 365). In one
detail, however, the Altaic legend shares a theme that was quite memora-
ble, and hence common among remembrances of the ood taken from
various parts of the world: the sending out of birds aer the ark came to
rest to determine if the ground was habitable.
9. Collins and Fasold, “Bogus ‘Noah’s Ark,’” 441, table1.
“How would such
skepticism explain
how and why
someone would drag
large basaltic objects
in the form of sea
anchors—sea anchors
much too large for any
conventional ship—to
a place high in the
mountains and far
distant from any sea?”
