Part 7/15:
Flat Earth advocates often argue ships disappear bottom-up because waves or waves' heights obscure the hull before the superstructure, attributing this to perspective or wave height rather than curvature.
Quantitative Analysis of Wave Heights
Using data from NOAA, average waves in open ocean conditions are about 8 to 11 feet from crest to trough, with tops reaching up to 22 feet in very rough seas. For a ship about 177 feet tall, waves would need to reach hundreds of feet high to obscure the entire vessel, an improbable scenario in typical conditions.