# Quickest way to transport a ship across land? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [February 22, 2005, 7:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quickest-way-to-transport-a-ship-across-land/291318 "2005-02-22T07:39:07Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2005, 11:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quickest-way-to-transport-a-ship-across-land/291318/21 "2005-02-22T23:27:58Z")
> [@](#): > > And I don’t think it’s too rude to wonder why someone is asking how to do something that is rather off the wall. The “why?” was fine, the suggested answer was rude. ---
**Author:** ![MC\_E](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c77e96/32.png) [@MC\_E](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MC_E)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2005, 11:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quickest-way-to-transport-a-ship-across-land/291318/22 "2005-02-22T23:35:15Z")
Not entirely related, about halfway down the page [here](http://www.cruisenh.com/calendar/index.shtml) is an account of how them moved a 203 foot iron ship to inland Lake Winnipausakee in New Hampshire, in 1940. Essentially, they cut it up into 20 pieces, shipped it by rail, and welded it back together. ---
**Author:** ![manhattan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/manhattan/32/7_2.png) [@manhattan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/manhattan)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2005, 11:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quickest-way-to-transport-a-ship-across-land/291318/23 "2005-02-22T23:39:26Z")
You’re gonna need a smaller boat. [/Chief Brody] ---
**Author:** ![Xema](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/9de053/32.png) [@Xema](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Xema)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2005, 1:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quickest-way-to-transport-a-ship-across-land/291318/24 "2005-02-23T01:25:37Z")
> [@Finagle](#): > > one long-shot approach would be a heavy lifting dirigible. Poking around the web, I’ve found vague references to designs that would lift 1000000 to 6000000 pounds. I’m more than a bit dubious that such behemoths would be practicable You are right to be dubious. The Hindenburg (largest airship every to fly), at over 800’ long and with a volume of over 7 million cubic ft carried a payload of around 15,000 lbs. The size and cost of something with a payload over 300 times as large would be formidable. ---
**Author:** ![Princhester](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3e96dc/32.png) [@Princhester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Princhester)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2005, 1:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quickest-way-to-transport-a-ship-across-land/291318/25 "2005-02-23T01:39:31Z")
> [@Princhester](#): > > Woot? A cape size vessel with a deadweight of well over 100,000 tonnes would be that big. How do you figure? Sorry this is wrong. About 25,000 would be accurate. Gettin’ old, memory failing. ---
**Author:** ![DrFidelius](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/drfidelius/32/3447_2.png) [@DrFidelius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrFidelius)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2005, 1:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quickest-way-to-transport-a-ship-across-land/291318/26 "2005-02-23T13:11:11Z")
> [@Xema](#): > > You are right to be dubious. The Hindenburg (largest airship every to fly), at over 800’ long and with a volume of over 7 million cubic ft carried a payload of around 15,000 lbs. The size and cost of something with a payload over 300 times as large would be formidable. New materials, new engineering would allow the application of a greater percentage of the lift to the payload. According to the formulae in \*\*British Airships: Past, Present and Future \*\* by George Whale, 1,000 cubic feet of hydrogen gives us a gross lift at one atmosphere of 70 pounds. Our hypothetical 25,000 ton vessel would need only ::lightning fast calculation:: 71,428,571 cubic feet of hydrogen to counteract its mass. Given advances in materials science, I feel confident in saying that this would mean a fleet of no more than thirty Hindenberg-sized lifters. This would look rather like the collection of airships tethered together to carry the containment vessel of the alien mutagenic virus that was released over New York in the late 1940s. ---
**Author:** ![spingears](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ebca7d/32.png) [@spingears](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/spingears)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2005, 2:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quickest-way-to-transport-a-ship-across-land/291318/27 "2005-02-23T14:50:04Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > Regardless, how is _your_ question pertinent to the topic or polite in this Forum? (Particularly since you then provide an answer that is seriously in error: the 806’ x 67’ x 36’ (length x beam x depth, draft was ~28’) ore boat on which I worked my second season weighed over 4,000 tons unloaded.) 2,500 tons x 2,000 #/Ton = 5,000,000 # 5,000,000 # / 7.481 #/Gal = 668,359 Gal 668,359 Gal / 8.336 Gal/CuFt = 80,177 CuFt Assume 30 Ft draft leaves 2,672 SqFt surface area. Assume 65 Ft beam leaves :smack: 41 ft length One of the calculators HP11C/me made a mistake. Mea Culpa, sorry about that. ---
**Author:** ![Finagle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/b19c9b/32.png) [@Finagle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Finagle)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2005, 3:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quickest-way-to-transport-a-ship-across-land/291318/28 "2005-02-23T15:07:47Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > The “why?” was fine, the suggested answer was rude. Took me a while to figure out what the suggested answer actually meant. So I agree with you – it could have been more tactfully phrased. ---
**Author:** ![Xema](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/9de053/32.png) [@Xema](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Xema)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2005, 4:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quickest-way-to-transport-a-ship-across-land/291318/29 "2005-02-23T16:38:01Z")
> [@DrFidelius](#): > > Given advances in materials science, I feel confident in saying that this would mean a fleet of no more than thirty Hindenberg-sized lifters. So instead of a 300-fold increase in capacity, you’re proposing only a 10-fold jump. That’s a lot more reasonable. But it would still be an unprecedented advance in the state of the art, and so likely attended by enormous difficulties and staggering cost. And you’d be left with a fleet that shared all the drawbacks of airships: costly to operate, slow, vulnerable to weather, short of ground infrastructure, etc. While the industry necessary to develop, construct & test these is ramping up and assembling its funding, I say we truck the necessary materials to the intended destination and build a new barge. ---
**Author:** ![InvidiousCourgette](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/e47c2d/32.png) [@InvidiousCourgette](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/InvidiousCourgette)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2005, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quickest-way-to-transport-a-ship-across-land/291318/30 "2005-02-23T17:21:21Z")
Since we are thinking a little outside the box here, how about this idea: Fabricate a real big rubber ball that can be disassembled into two parts. Fill one of the parts with water. Lift your barge up and put it in the water. Stick on the other half of the ball. Then just roll your barge where you want to go. We could call this, umm, roll-a-barging? OK, I need to go and take my medication now. ---
**Author:** ![Finagle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/b19c9b/32.png) [@Finagle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Finagle)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2005, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quickest-way-to-transport-a-ship-across-land/291318/31 "2005-02-23T17:36:36Z")
> [@InvidiousCourgette](#): > > Since we are thinking a little outside the box here, how about this idea: > > Fabricate a real big rubber ball that can be disassembled into two parts. Fill one of the parts with water. Lift your barge up and put it in the water. Stick on the other half of the ball. Then just roll your barge where you want to go. We could call this, umm, roll-a-barging? That’s a cool idea. Although seeing as the barge has to displace its own weight in water, you’ve at least doubled the amount of mass that has to be moved. Tripled if you count the weight of the sphere itself. Given the stresses, I don’t think rubber is going to do the job for the ball – you’d probably need the material that Ringworlds are made of. Sloshing would be a problem – every try steering a canoe filled with water? And the local citizenry might possibly object to a 600 foot Unstoppable Ball of Death rolling erratically through the countryside. However, the biggest obstacle would be acquiring enough hamsters to motivate the ball and then teaching them all to swim. ---
**Author:** ![scr4](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/59ef9b/32.png) [@scr4](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scr4)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2005, 6:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quickest-way-to-transport-a-ship-across-land/291318/32 "2005-02-23T18:12:26Z")
> [@Xema](#): > > And you’d be left with a fleet that shared all the drawbacks of airships: costly to operate, slow, vulnerable to weather, short of ground infrastructure, etc. You don’t need dirigibles, just balloons. The barge can be pulled along by surface vehicles (tractors, bulldozers, crane trucks). Ignoring the mass of the balloon skin material, you’d need a hundred balloons, each 140 ft in diameter. OK, that doesn’t sound all that feasible either, but it’s better than a fleet of dirigibles. > [@Finagle](#): > > That’s a cool idea. Although seeing as the barge has to displace its own weight in water, you’ve at least doubled the amount of mass that has to be moved. “Displacement” is the amount of water it _would_ displace if you put it into a container full of water. But the displaced water doesn’t have to stay in the container. It doesn’t even need to be there in the first place - just put the ship in a dry tight-fitting container, and fill the gap with water. That said, I just can’t imagine the rubber ball working. The water would want to pool at the bottom and expand the ball. The rubber has to be tight enough to counteract this water pressure. ---
**Author:** ![Finagle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/b19c9b/32.png) [@Finagle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Finagle)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2005, 6:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quickest-way-to-transport-a-ship-across-land/291318/33 "2005-02-23T18:26:44Z")
> [@scr4](#): > > “Displacement” is the amount of water it _would_ displace if you put it into a container full of water. But the displaced water doesn’t have to stay in the container. It doesn’t even need to be there in the first place - just put the ship in a dry tight-fitting container, and fill the gap with water… I’m not sure I agree with you. In order not to be sitting on the bottom of the ball and causing friction, the barge has to be floating. Ergo, there has to be at least enough water in the sphere for it to displace. Really, at this point, I’m leaning towards beaching the barge and waiting for continental drift to move it to wherever it’s going. ---
**Author:** ![InvidiousCourgette](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/e47c2d/32.png) [@InvidiousCourgette](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/InvidiousCourgette)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2005, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quickest-way-to-transport-a-ship-across-land/291318/34 "2005-02-23T18:33:13Z")
> [@Finagle](#): > > And the local citizenry might possibly object to a 600 foot Unstoppable Ball of Death rolling erratically through the countryside. > > However, the biggest obstacle would be acquiring enough hamsters to motivate the ball and then teaching them all to swim. Hey, don’t you go dissing my 600ft Unstoppable Ball of Death idea. All you and **scr4** have come up with as objections are minor nitpicks. I will use some sort of extra thick super strength miracle rubber. As for the hamsters, I will soon come up with a less outrageous idea for providing motive force. \ 50 Foot Bionic Hamsters \ ---
**Author:** ![Mycroft\_H](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/898d66/32.png) [@Mycroft\_H](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mycroft_H)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2005, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quickest-way-to-transport-a-ship-across-land/291318/35 "2005-02-23T18:35:30Z")
> [@Finagle](#): > > Really, at this point, I’m leaning towards beaching the barge and waiting for continental drift to move it to wherever it’s going. Great! I think we might have a winner. By the way, has anyone seen our guest **Mert-Sekert**? It would be nice is he/she stopped by to fill us in with more details or at least tell us how we’re doing. ---
**Author:** ![Mert-Sekert](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5f8ce5/32.png) [@Mert-Sekert](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mert-Sekert)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2005, 7:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quickest-way-to-transport-a-ship-across-land/291318/36 "2005-02-23T19:16:09Z")
I used to live near Lake Michigan when I was a child, and I always saw a constrant stream of boats being transported by the means of trailers; of course, the boats weren’t as large as the one I created in my question. What I really wanted to know mankind has the proper tools to transport a large vessel across a wide thatch of land without completely disassembling it, or if this was even feasible. Not over mountains or any rough terrain, and just enough land that would make a canal improbable. ---
**Author:** ![Mert-Sekert](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5f8ce5/32.png) [@Mert-Sekert](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mert-Sekert)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2005, 7:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quickest-way-to-transport-a-ship-across-land/291318/37 "2005-02-23T19:17:43Z")
Please ignore the errors and lack of information. I’m running late for work. ---
**Author:** ![Mycroft\_H](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/898d66/32.png) [@Mycroft\_H](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mycroft_H)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2005, 8:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quickest-way-to-transport-a-ship-across-land/291318/38 "2005-02-23T20:31:30Z")
Hi **Mert-Sekert** , thanks for the note. Given the research I and others have come up with ( **minor7flat5** ’s link was really cool), I think that it is feasible, but not practical. Mankind can do a lot of very amazing things. But it would definitely take a lot of effort to transport a 2500 ton vessel any sort of distance. In your exercise, does the weight include the cargo? It really depends on if you are considering a one-time transport or a multi-use plan. From a practical standpoint, railroad cars work very well as a proven commodity for multi-use transport of cargo. If the exercise is more a matter of getting the vessel to a certain point (one-time trip such as a boat to a remote lake) this needs to be handled in the design stage of the vessel in question. Construct it so that it can be hauled in manageable chunks - all part of the beauty of engineering. Slightly related story - I read once about the effort involved in hauling a paddle wheeler to Lake Tahoe. (Found a bit of a [link](http://www.tahoedixie2.com/MSD/Vessel.html).) They had to strip it down, plot the route to be able to get past bridges and overhead wires, etc. and get through a tunnel near the lake. For the tunnel work they had to conduct a very accurate survey, model it in a computer and check the fit electronically before they got the permit. I think they had just a few inches of clearance. Granted this example deals more with a tight fit instead of a large load (the boat weighs 100 tons), but it gives an idea of the planning necessary. ---
**Author:** ![Whack-a-Mole](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whack-a-mole/32/141_2.png) [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2005, 9:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quickest-way-to-transport-a-ship-across-land/291318/39 "2005-02-23T21:35:36Z")
Here’s a [picture](http://www.cr.nps.gov/history/online_books/butowsky1/u505p.htm#3) of the U-505 being moved across Lake Shore Drive to its final home as an exhibit at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. It has been awhile since I have been to the exhibit (although look forward to its newly remodeled home due to open soon) but IIRC it took ~8 hours to move it all of a block or two (you can see the museum in the picture). In the picture you can see it was quite an undertaking. Granted they were probably being extra careful with a museum piece than one might be with a barge but still a LOT of work and it is smaller than the barge being mentioned. Stats: Displacement: ~1200 tons Length: ~252 feet Beam: ~22 feet Height: ~31 feet ---
**Author:** ![Mert-Sekert](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5f8ce5/32.png) [@Mert-Sekert](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mert-Sekert)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2005, 1:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quickest-way-to-transport-a-ship-across-land/291318/40 "2005-02-24T01:12:08Z")
The answers so far have been great, and I want to thank everyone for replying. I’ve haunted the SDMB for over a year without posting or replying, and I’ve seen how generous with information and ideas the members can be. So thanks again. 🙂 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quickest-way-to-transport-a-ship-across-land/291318.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quickest-way-to-transport-a-ship-across-land/291318.md?page=3)