All The Ships At Sea: A Pragmatic Test Of Earth's Shape

Z.W. Wolf

Senior Member.
For some reason few people on both sides of the FE issue talk about this. How many ships have sailed between the continents in the last 500 years?

Just one trivial example: The clipper ships. When there was a premium for the first new crop of tea from China, the clippers took this route:



When steam, the Suez canal, and new tea plantations in India, Ceylon etc. made the the tea clippers obsolete, they started to transport wool from Australia... this time going east around the horn.


If you take the time to study the history of the clippers you'll appreciate that these voyages were matters of great public interest. Routes, exact times, everything about the voyages were and are well known. How did the clippers navigate? How did they make the distances in known times? How could this possibly be consistent with the FE map?

Then you have to start thinking about all of naval history for the last 500 years. How many commercial voyages were there in the 16th century, the 17th century, the 18th century, the 19th century, the 20th century? How many military voyages? How many yachts? Pirates even?

As of January 2016, there were 51,405 ships in the world's merchant fleets.

An interactive map for the year 2012: https://www.shipmap.org/


There must be a correct map. Otherwise ships would get hopelessly lost.

There must be a correct way to navigate: Otherwise ships would get hopelessly lost.

Only one map can be compatible to the known times, distances, and directions of millions of voyages.

No matter how you draw in the details in the flat earth map, this map is not compatible with the "mainstream" globe earth map. The differences are more extreme in the southern hemisphere, but even in the northern hemisphere the maps are not compatible.

How do you draw a FE map that is consistent with every known sea voyage? Make the continents a different shape and size to "shrink" the oceans? Then how do you make that consistent with all the land trips made inside the continents? Put the continents at different distances from one another to make a voyage between two of them (somewhat) consistent? Then inevitably you must be increasing the distance somewhere else. E.g. Australia, Africa and South America.

A web of millions of voyages, made by people who were just pragmatically trying to get around, has tested and verified the proper map.
 
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IMO all FE conversations should begin with this. The conversation is dominated by discussions about theory. But theory has to be tested. Which model and which map has passed the test?

FE belief is predicated on the odd idea that the map of the world is unknown and down right mysterious. But people have been traveling between the continents for hundreds of years. It's now a mundane activity.


Point one: There must be a true map. How would ships find their way across thousands of miles of ocean otherwise? Which direction would they set off? What's the distance? Someone somewhere must have a true map.

Point two: The map that sailors have been using is the sphere earth map. Let's not get sidetracked into the argument that charts are flat pieces of paper. We're talking about directions and distances. The directions and distances of the sphere earth map have guided sailors for hundreds of years.

Point three: There have been millions of voyages, and the distances and directions always match up to the SE map, and could not match up with any FE map. Any FE map must have different directions and distances and could not compatible with the sphere earth map. The differences are most notable south of the equator. The FE map shows a vastly larger surface south of the equator compared to the SE map. The SE map has been tested millions of times. Not one of the hundreds of thousands of sailors in history has reported that the SE map doesn't work, or reported the huge distances in the southern hemisphere that would have to be there according to any FE map.

Point four: Because we know the sphere earth map is correct any theory that seemingly supports a FE must be a mistake. It's as simple as that. You're just making a mistake.
 
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IMO all FE conversations should begin with this. The conversation is dominated by discussions about theory. But theory has to be tested. Which model and which map has passed the test?

A problem there is that topics like coordinates and 3D to 2D projection is rather unintuitive to most people. I brought up the Mercator map on Joe Rogan and I could see his eyes glaze over. (1h54m50s)

Source: https://youtu.be/kvitm0bMHyA?t=1h54m50s
 
You're just making a mistake.
No I'm not. ;)

And just to say: I think bringing the shipping routes into this is great. I know you haven't had much feedback - from either side - but I think that's just testament to how straightforward and inarguable this is. It's just like, oh yeah, there's nothing to either add to or debate in that.

Cheers. :)
 
Off topic but ship related. I did a qualification in navigation at 16. I seem to recall that a minute of Longitude equivalent to a nautical mile. However a degree of longitude gets shorter as you go further north and south and charts take this into account.
I only got a C so I could be wrong
 
Off topic but ship related. I did a qualification in navigation at 16. I seem to recall that a minute of Longitude equivalent to a nautical mile. However a degree of longitude gets shorter as you go further north and south and charts take this into account.
I only got a C so I could be wrong

Latitude stays the same. One minute of Lat. is one nautical mile.

The US chart 1 will tell you more than you need to know, but they drive on the other side of the road, and get port/starboard buoyage the wrong way round!
https://nauticalcharts.noaa.gov/publications/docs/us-chart-1/ChartNo1.pdf
 
"All the ships at sea" -- they travel great distances favoring the great circle route, if possible, because it's the shortest distance, correct? But ocean currents should be a factor as well as dangerous rocks or bad weather, or pirates?

However, when it comes to navigating a great circle course, bearings can be tricky going say from east to west. Your course has to be constantly corrected so that you end up turning in regards to compass bearing even while by eye you appear to be sailing straight ahead, which in fact, you are. A ship departing San Diego headed for Hawaii sails due west but to remain on a due west course has to constantly turn starboard (right) in order to keep the same latitude, otherwise she'll drift southwest by maintaining a dead ahead rudder. Does this make sense on a "flat" earth? Is this not "a pragmatic test of Earth's shape?"

Consequently, in order to make navigation simpler for following a great circle route, a rhumb line course is plotted so the ship can simply keep the same bearing for planned shorter segments of the route, the collection of which segments of rhumb lines approximates the great circle route.

Except for one: Traveling due west along the equator. Starting let's say in Equador and heading due west, no adjustment need be made to stay on the great circle route, unless of course, you want to avoid an obstacle such as the Galapagos islands or whatever. On a "flat" earth, how could this be true? How would one sail a straight line due west, without turning right or left (starboard or port) when the "flat" earth map shows the equator as a circular route that continually curves to the right (starboard)?
 
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