87. The lighthouse steeple of St Botolph's Parish Church at a height of 290 feet should not be visible from a ship 40 miles away on a spherical Earth

“The lighthouse steeple of St Botolph's Parish Church in Boston is 290 feet tall and visible from over 40 miles away, where it should be hidden a full 800 feet below the horizon.”
Probably a bogus observation, but in any case Dubay and Samuel Rowbotham can't do trigonometry.

For evidence that the quoted observation is bogus, click here:

Why Dubay's lighthouse quotes are bogus


However, if you want to take the observation as genuine read on to see why this still does not add up to a proof.


Using the correct figure and calculation, the observer on the ship would have to be at a height of 244 feet.  From the deck of a ship that would mean that the observer would be about 238 feet too low to see the lighthouse.

According to Thomas Winship (Zetetic Consmogeny) this proof is taken from an 2nd May 1896 publication called "Answers". 


In 1886 the ships that would be observing the lighthouse would be sailing ships or steam ships that still had sails as a back-up.  Look-outs on those ships would be placed in a crows nest near the top of the main mast.

"... masts were still to be found on many merchant and passenger ships well into the 1900s"
Source:  https://www.uh.edu/engines/epi1338.htm
However, even taking into account sightings from the ship's mast observers on large ships would not achieve the required 244 feet of elevation to meet  the claim that the light was visible from 40 miles away.

The tallest ship of that period that I have found places the top of the mast about 200 feet above sea level.  See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Republic

Winship does not gives us a source for the original claim of 40 miles, so there is no way of validating how accurate the claim is.

However if we take refraction into account, by my calculation for a typical refractive index the required elevation reduces to 174 feet.  If the 40 miles was based on a single account, it is possible that it could have been a sighting from a large ship with a tall mast.

As the possibility exists for a sighting on a spherical Earth, and we have no confirmation as to whether the 40 mile figure was a general claim or a specific observation this historical observation cannot be considered a proof.

There is also good reason to believe that all these observations of distant lighthouse sightings are bogus.
For details click the link below.

Why Dubay's lighthouse quotes are bogus



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