This view is directly up into the bow of the hull impression, looking south, showing a massive detritus pile in which will someday reveal all that is left of the physical remains of the Ark of Noah. This "below-the-waterline" impression is 538 feet in length, however the ark's actual length was 12 feet longer due to overhang of bow and stern making it 550 feet in overall length.

This great ship was not constructed with keel and rib construction, as later ships developed by man were. It would not have been suficciently strong using that inferior design technique given its great size. Naval architects are all in agreement. "One cannot build such a large ship with wood." they say. "Wood is not strong enough." They are all limited in their scope of thinking. They cannot conceive that Yahweh, their creator, could have seen beyond their own designs and offered Noah a design that would bypass all of man's later naval development and be indeed, buildable and usable.

The ship was, and could only have been, a fully triangulated wooden spaceframe, with an internal built-up spar structure, making it stronger than a Boeing Flying Fortress wing in scale. It was held together with iron pins on tongue and groove attachments. The scale model we have constructed at 36 inches in length, and covered in balsa wood is unbreakable from end to end, like and egg, it is strengthened when compressed by strong men. All loads set against the real ship would have attenuated via "tributary loads" through the maze of small 30-40 foot modules made of tree trunks perhaps 30 inches in diameter average. Its "Gusenforth factor" (load bearing ratio to individual structural element size) is extremely high, perhaps 20-30 times stronger than normal wooden ship construction. Iron pins at the connections were critical, making all connections "100% efficient" whenever any of the three: torsion, tension, and compression forces acted on the ship or any module.

After covering the ark with outer wooden skin, she was coated inside and out, as caulking, with kpr (kapher), a Hebrew word meaning "bitumen" or "tar" to seal any small spaces between the wood, making the ship completely water tight. The false reading "Gopher wood" in the KJV Bible translation, was caused, or evolved by means of a Hebrew scribal error. The Hebrew letter (K) and (G) are comparable, espceially when written by hand with a brush. "Kopher wood," in fact is any wood covered with tar (kpr). The English word "koffer" evolved from this Hebrew word. A "Koffer-dam" is used to encircle a sunken ship, for example, then covered or sealed with tar, or made with lapping steel elements backed with earth, and then the water is pumped out and the bottom is exposed. This technique was used on the battleship Maine, in Havana Harbor, Cuba, after the Spanish American war to determine the cause of its sinking. To see a photograph of the Havana Harbor koffer dam surrounding the sunken Maine:

http://lcweb2.loc.gov/pnp/pan/6a22000/6a22600/6a22679r.jpg

This is the correct understanding of "kopher wood," as opposed to "Gopher wood." Gopher wood does not now, nor did it ever, exist as a species. Oak, pine, elm, or Cedar wood covered with tar would be called: Kopher (-ed ) wood.