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"Naval Architecture, teach the controversy!"

I don't know the size of a slave ship, but it probably wasn't bigger than a galleon, and it may have been much smaller. This slave ship could hold 600 slaves. The ark could hold 2,400 of them if it were four times as long. That's really packing them in, like the African captives. I don't know how Noah could have done it.

This opens up another whole area where the Noah story falls flat on its face in numerous ways.

The largest wooden ships ever built were around 300ft long, but these weren't really wooden ships, they were heavily braced internally with steel beams. Even then they didn't really work, not being suitable for the open sea. They distorted visibly in light swell and in a wooden ship distortion is really bad news (the opposite of what people think intuitively of flexibility in swell reducing overall stress) because the distortion opens up gaps in the planks and lets water past the seal.

The largest purely wooden ships of conventional multi-decked design like the ark (as opposed to rafts) were much smaller than this, around 200 feet long. The decks are an important part of the structural strength of boats like this, and contrary to Hermann's ideas of decks the height of railroad stock cars they would typically be less than 6 feet tall to act as cross-bracing. Remove them or heighten them and the boat would quickly fall apart in moderate swell.

Remember here we are talking about sea conditions associated with a global flood, with no land-masses stopping swell build-up. The closest modern equivalent to the kind of sea-state that the ark could expect would be the Southern Ocean south of 45 degrees.

Since the believers get so tired of being scoffed at I don't know why they don't prove us all wrong. I'd contribute to a Kent Hovind style prize to any 8 volunteers who construct an Ark out of wood (Heck, I'll let them use help for that part), gather a representative portion of the world's species on it (lets say 10%, again they can have help for that part), and go adrift on the Southern Ocean for a year to see how well the whole thing works (As it won't be raining continuously I'll allow unlimited fresh-water replenishment through the 1 cubit hole in the side of the ark). Put me down for $100,000 if they can do it, and disembark with 95% of the species intact and healthy.

The largest wooden ships ever built were around 300ft long, but these weren't really wooden ships, they were heavily braced internally with steel beams.

The largest purely wooden ships of conventional multi-decked design like the ark (as opposed to rafts)

Who said it was a wooden ship? And how do you know what its design was to say it was not a raft? Do you have the plans that God gave to Noah?

You seem obsessed with the vision of the Ark as a big wood box like shown in children's books, or perhaps as something like the last modern wood sailing ships.

It makes far more sense to see the Ark as a large version of something like the earliest ships in recorded civilization (if the flood were true, wouldn't Naval Architecture derive from the Ark, rather than attempting to extrapolate the Ark out of the final stage of Naval Architecture circa 1900?) - rafts made of reeds, logs, or similar, with a wooden superstructure on top, and guided and stabilized by drogue stones underneath and sails on a main mast. The wooden superstructure would then be relatively open like a large wooden building, since it would not be the primary load bearing source of bouyancy.

The decks are an important part of the structural strength of boats like this, and contrary to Hermann's ideas of decks the height of railroad stock cars they would typically be less than 6 feet tall to act as cross-bracing.

Well, the Bible speaks of 3 decks in the Ark, and the Ark being 30 cubits tall, so that would be 15+ ft. per deck, which is the height of an AAR Plate F rail car.

They wouldn't be cross bracing, because the Ark would be a superstructure on top of a large ocean-going wooden raft like this - a log raft form used in coast-wise movement of logs from the Pacific NW to southern California on the Pacfici Ocean:

Note the men to help you determine the scale of this wood vessel.

There is nothing "impractical" about constructing a very large ocean-going wood/reed raft (especially one covered in pitch to help with seaworthiness) upon which to build the ark.

gather a representative portion of the world's species on it (lets say 10%, again they can have help for that part

Again, there are relatively few species that would need to go on the Ark - a couple tens of thousands. You don't need to bring fish, whales, waterfowl, plants, fungi etc.