“Plane Sailing is usually defined to be the art of navigating a ship on the supposition that the earth is a plane … even when longitude enters into consideration, it is still with the plane triangle only that we have to deal … but as the investigation here given in the text shows, the rules for plane sailing would equally hold good though the surface were a plane.” -J.R. Young, “Navigation and Nautical Astronomy”
“It must be evident to everyone who understands what a triangle is, that the base of any such figure on a globe would be an arc of a circle, of which the center would be the center of the globe. Thus, instead of a plane triangle, the figure would contain one plane angle and two spherical angles. Hence, if the plane triangle is what we have to deal with, and such is the case, the base of the triangle would be a straight line - the ocean. That all triangulation used at sea is plane, proves that the sea is a plane. The foregoing quotation states that a plane triangle is used for a spherical surface, but ‘the rules for plane sailing would equally hold good though the surface were a plane.’ What fine reasoning! It is like saying that the rules for describing a circle are those used for drawing a square, but they would equally hold good though the figure were a square.” -Thomas Winship, “Zetetic Cosmogeny” (88)
Plane Sailing is navigating a ship making all mathematical calculations on the assumption that the Earth is perfectly flat. If the Earth were in fact a sphere, such an errant assumption would lead to constant glaring inaccuracies, and the necessity for using spherical trigonometry would become obvious. Plane Sailing has worked perfectly fine in both theory and practice for thousands of years, however, and plane trigonometry has time and again proven more accurate than spherical trigonometry in determining distances across the oceans. It is so commonly used at sea; “Navigation in Theory and Practice” states that, “In practice scarcely any other rules are used but those derived from plane sailing. The great and serious objection to Plane Sailing is that longitude cannot be found by it accurately, although in practice, it is more frequently found by it than by any other method.” So both latitude and longitude are found most often and most accurately by assuming the Earth to be flat, more accurately even than assuming the Earth to be spherical!
“Plane sailing proves that the surface of water is a plane or horizontal surface and in practice it is shown that this plane extends for many thousands of miles. Whether the voyage is outwards or homewards makes no difference; thus showing that a ‘short voyage’ to the Cape and back to England can be accomplished by plane sailing. The fact that water is flat like a sheet of paper (when undisturbed by wind and tide) is my ‘working anchor,’ and the powerful ‘ground tackle’ of all those who reject the delusions of modern theoretical astronomy. Prove water to be convex, and we will at once and forever recant and grant you anything you like to demand.” -Thomas Winship, “Zetetic Cosmogeny” (91)
“If the Earth were a globe, a small model globe would be the very best - because the truest - thing for the navigator to take to sea with him. But such a thing as that is not known: with such a toy as a guide, the mariner would wreck his ship, of a certainty! This is a proof that Earth is not a globe … As the mariners' compass points north and south at one and the same time, and a meridian is a north and south line, it follows that meridians can be no other than straight lines. But, since all meridians on a globe are semicircles, it is an incontrovertible proof that the Earth is not a globe.” -William Carpenter, “100 Proofs the Earth is Not a Globe” (8-13)
“The needle of this most important instrument is straight, its two ends pointing North and South at the same time, consequently the meridians must be straight lines also; whereas, on a Globe, they are semi-circles. Even at the Equator the needle points straight, which would be impossible, were that the mid-way of a vast convex Globe, as, in such case, the one end would dip towards the North, and the other be pointed towards the sky. Again, the navigator, when he goes to sea, takes his observations, and relies on the Compass to guide him as to the direction in which he wishes to proceed ; he does not provide himself with the model of a Globe, which, if the world were a Globe, would surely be the safest plan for him to adopt, but he takes flat maps or charts. Thus, in practice, he sails his ship as if the sea were horizontal, though in theory he had been erroneously taught that it is convex.” -David Wardlaw Scott, “Terra Firma” (99)
The South Pole Does Not Exist!
In the Flat-Earth model of the cosmos, the North Pole is the immovable center of the world and the entire universe. Polaris, the North Star, sits straight over the North Pole at the highest point in the heavens, and like a slowly rotating planetarium dome all the celestial bodies revolve around Polaris and over the Earth once per day. The Sun circles over and around the circumference of Earth every 24 hours, steadily travelling each day from the equator during the March vernal equinox, up to the Tropic of Cancer at the June summer solstice, back down to the equator for the September autumnal equinox, and all the way down to the Tropic of Capricorn on the December winter solstice.
In the Flat-Earth model, the South Pole does not exist at all and Antarctica is instead a gigantic ice-wall extending the circumference of Earth holding in the oceans like a giant bowl, or a “world cup.” As strange as this concept may sound at first, it is a fact that if you set a bearing due South from anywhere on Earth, inevitably at or before 78 degrees Southern latitude, you will find yourself face-to-face with an enormous ice-wall towering 100-200 feet in the air extending to the East and West the entire circumference of the world!
“The ice-barrier, so frequently referred to in accounts of the Antarctic regions, is the fore-front of the enormous glacier-covering, or ice-cap, which, accumulating in vast, undulating fields from the heavy snowfall, and ultimately attaining hundreds, if not thousands, of feet in thickness, creeps from the continent of Antarctica into the polar sea. The ice-barrier, yet a part of the parent ice-cap, presents itself to the navigator who has boldness enough to approach its fearful front, as a solid, perpendicular wall of marble-like ice, ranging from one thousand to two thousand feet in thickness, of which from one hundred to two hundred feet rises above, and from eight hundred to eighteen hundred feet sinks below, the level of the sea." -Greely, General A. W. "Antarctica, or the Hypothetical Southern Continent." Cosmopolitan 17 (1894): p. 296
“It has been demonstrated that the earth is a plane, the surface-centre of which is immediately underneath the star called ‘Polaris,’ and the extremities of which are bounded by a vast region of ice and water and irregular masses of land. The whole terminates in fog and darkness, where snow and driving hail, piercing sleet and boisterous winds, howling storms, madly-mounting waves, and clashing icebergs are almost constant.” -Dr. Samuel Rowbotham, “Zetetic Astronomy, Earth Not a Globe!” (117)
