In the Footsteps of Mulek Latter-day Saint Joins Expedition to Recreate Book of Mormon Voyage
By The Arizona Beehive
I
t’s not every day that a 600 BC sailing vessel crosses the Atlantic Ocean in modern times. In February of this year, a Phoenician replica ship did just that—making landfall in the New World after sailing from the Mediterranean Sea. It’s mission? To prove that the ancient Phoenicians could have successfully navigated from the Old World to the Americas thousands of years before Christopher Columbus. Last month, I had the opportunity to speak with Boyd Tuttle, one of two Latter-day Saint crew members who participated in this expedition. For them, the adventure had a faith-building component. If it could be shown that Phoenicians were traversing the Atlantic in ancient times that would give credence to Book of Mormon
Captain Phillip Beale.
migrations like that of Lehi, Mulek, Jaredites, and others. I asked Boyd what could have possessed him to board a really small 2,600-year-old-design wooden vessel and sail across the open ocean on a voyage that had never before been attempted? “I wanted to see firsthand if such a primitive vessel was capable of carrying Mulek’s family across the ‘great deep’ to the Promised Land,” Tuttle said. Led by former U.K. Royal Navy officer and adventurer Philip Beale, Tuttle and 10 other crew members boarded the replica ship and departed the port city of Carthage, Tunisia on September 28th, 2019. “Philip Beale is such a visionary,” Tuttle said. “This whole concept was
20 • ArizonaBeehive.com •
Photo courtesy of Boyd J. Tuttle
Phoenicia under construction 2007.
Photo courtesy of Boyd J. Tuttle
The Phoenician at sea.
Photo courtesy of Boyd J. Tuttle
Boyd J. Tuttle.
An avid reader and book publisher himself, Tuttle sought out Beale’s U.K-published book, Sailing Close to the Wind, eventually becoming the USA distributor for Beale’s book. It was some time later that Beale
Photo courtesy of Boyd J. Tuttle
his brainchild—from the ship’s construction to the voyage itself.” Beale commissioned and built the 67-foot long, 20-foot wide, 50-ton replica in 2008 using traditional methods on the island of Arwad off the coast of Syria. The design was based on a remarkably well-preserved 2,600-yearold Phoenician shipwreck (“Jules Verne 7”) found off the coast of Marseilles, France in 1993. After christening the new ship Phoenicia, Beale set sail on a series of expeditions to expand human knowledge about ancient Phoenician sailing capabilities. Tuttle first came across Beale’s work in 2010 when a friend shared a report from his first expedition, where Phoenicia successfully circumnavigated the African continent. “I was struck by the parallels to
Photo courtesy of Boyd J. Tuttle
Boyd J. Tuttle at the helm of the Phoenician in the Mediterranean Sea.
Lehi’s voyage. When I heard Philip was planning to sail from the Mediterranean to America, I knew I had to be a part of it,” Tuttle said.
invited Tuttle to join the Phoenicians Before Columbus expedition in 2019. Continued on pg. 21
