A friend and I have been having an ongoing debate for years. We were at a pub on a wharf, watching shipping container ships and cruise ships come into dock, and he posed the question. With no wind, no waves, perfect conditions, could he move the ship at all?
In: Planetary Science
Don’t know about a container ship, but back in the early ‘90s I worked with Sea Shepherds fixing up an icebreaker they had that they’d just gotten back from the Canadian government who had trashed it. This was *long* before all the TV and media nonsense they got into.
It was in dock and we spent the summer working on it. At one point a big storm was slated to hit the area and we needed to tie on extra mooring lines and add extra protection between the ship and the dock.
To move the ship I just stuck a long board string enough to support my weight between the dock and the ship and stood on the end of it. Moved the ship more than enough to slide extra protection where it was needed.
This was in dock in very calm water in an area with mild tides.
If there had been waves or anything like that it would not have worked as the power of even very tiny waves striking the length of the ship would have completely overpowered then small amount of pressure I could put on the ship even using a long lever.
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