What Floats My Boat (a long post)

Back before macular degeneration began to dim my eyesight, I built model sailing ships. In fact, one of the proudest accomplishments of my life is that I once constructed a schooner inside a beer bottle.

Pretty pathetic, isn’t it. Looking back over almost 70 years and seeing a main highpoint of my life in a beer bottle—and the bottle was empty before I got it!

Last week I heard from Mike, my friend and former son-in-law. When he and Jennifer got married, as a wedding gift I built them a beautiful clipper ship in full sail. Worked on it for months and months. Thought of it as an heirloom for them to treasure…

The model ship did not last as long as their short marriage.

They had this cat.

The vile beast viewed that full-rigged tea clipper as a mortal enemy. Shredded the sails, clawed the rigging, chewed the hull—utterly mangled the heirloom.

This week gave me three other occasions to think about ships:

Yesterday, some new e-friends, Bill & Michelle Leep up in Michigan e-mailed me a scanned copy of a print by John Fryant showing an 1885 riverboat once stationed in Jacksonville:

The Queen Of The St. Johns was built in Ohio, then sailed down the Mississippi, across the Gulf of Mexico, around the Florida Keys, up the East Coast to Jacksonville.

Yes, during the 1800s more paddlewheelers plied the St. Johns than the Hudson. One chapter in my book Crackers & Carpetbaggers tells their story; and another chapter tells about the worst maritime disaster on the river when the City Of Sanford wrecked.

On the back of Bill & Michelle’s print is a full account of the Queen Of The St. John’s career on the river. The Leeps say they are interested in selling the print; if you’re interested, their e-mail address is billmichelleleep@gmail.com .

This week also, ZOM e-mailed me a clipping from: Daytona Beach News-Journal at http://www.news-journalonline.com/index.htm .

Archaeologists feel they’re hot on the trail to discovering the wreckage of an entire French fleet shipwrecked between Daytona and St. Augustine during a September hurricane in 1565.

I find that exciting news because the Jacksonville area was settled by French Protestants who tried to drive a wedge between the Spanish at St. Augustine 20 miles south of us, and the English on St. Simons Island, 20 miles north of us.

The Daytona archaeologists, working with the Center for Historical Archaeology in Melbourne, and the Lighthouse Archaeology Maritime Program, in St. Augustine, have uncovered a camping spot where French survivors of the fleet’s wreck got to shore. They figure the ships lie underwater near that spot on Mosquito Lagoon.

The camp site yielded coins, ceramics, personal articles and iron ship's spikes worked on a forge.

The fleet included the La Trinite, a 32-gun galleon, and the 29-gun royal galleon Emerillon, and many smallere ships..

French survivors struggled up the beach for weeks until they reached Matanzas Inlet (the name Matanzas means slaughter or massacre). When the French surrendered pleading for mercy, the Spanish rowed survivors across the inlet a few at a time in a small boat, then, once they wee separated from the group, slit their throats—all 250 of them.

The survivors’ trek reminds me of the one undertaken by the Dickenson party (see my July 23, 2008, “Seven Months Naked On The Beach”, blog post in the archives).

Both the Spanish site on Mazanzas Inlet and the site of the French settlement at Fort Caroline on the St. Johns River in Jacksonville are now national parks.

Still with me?

I’m interested in this stuff; hope you are too, because I have one more.

Take a look at this ancient boat:

As I’ve been thinking about other ships this morning—this stuff floats my boat—I also remember how I used to use the measurements of this one as an illustration back when I taught adult Bible classes.

During a drought in Israel in 1986, two brothers, Moshe and Yuval Lufan, discovered this boat buried in mud along the shore of the Sea of Galilee. Radiocarbon tests dated the boat as being 2,000 years old.

Some people went ape!

They concluded that a 2,000-year-old boat found in the Sea of Galilee just had to be the very boat Jesus taught from.

Not necessarily.

At best, this archaeological find shows us the type of boat used in New Testament times. Nothing at all directly connects this boat with Jesus. Nevertheless, many people named it “The Jesus Boat”; others call it “The Galilee Boat”; still others simply term it a roman boat.

Luke’s Gospel tells an incident involving such a boat:

And He entered into one of the ships, which was Simon's, and prayed him that he would thrust out a little from the land. And He sat down, and taught the people out of the ship.

Now when He had left speaking, He said unto Simon, “Launch out into the deep, and let down your nets for a draught”.

And Simon answering said unto Him,” Master, we have toiled all the night, and have taken nothing: nevertheless at thy word I will let down the net”.

And when they had this done, they inclosed a great multitude of fishes

When Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus' knees, saying, “Depart from me; for I am a sinful man, O Lord”.

For he was astonished, and all that were with him, at the draught of the fishes which they had taken:

There were other boats mentioned in that same passage of Scripture. The boat found in 1986 was not the only one afloat on the sea 2,000 years ago.

However, from mosaic pictures uncovered in the same area, the Galilee Boat seems typical of ships of that day.

And to me the most interesting thing about the boat is its measurements:

Although the superstructure wore away under the mud, the remaining depth is almost five feet; the ships length is almost 30 feet long, and the width… the width is only eight feet.

No wonder Simon Peter was wowed.

He’d fished all night. He knew what he was doing; he was a professional fisherman. He knew the futility of a waterhaul when your nets come up empty.

That’s on one side of the boat.

“Nevertheless, at Thy word…”

On the other side of the boat—a mere eight feet away—swam a huge school of fish.

On one side of the boat we see the best of human endeavor. Eight feet away, we see the abundance of God.

What made the difference?

Obedience.

“Nevertheless, at Thy word…”

The Yigal Allon Museum in Kibbutz Ginosar, Israel, displays the Galilee Boat.

It is safely preserved.

I have it on good authority that the museum does not allow cats.