Nephi states that after they "had prepared all things, much fruits and meat from the wilderness, and honey in abundance, and provisions according to that which the Lord had commanded us, we did go down into the ship with all our loading and our seeds, and whatsoever thing we had brought with us" (1 Nephi 18:6).
According to Tim Severin's book, The Sindbad Voyage, the completed hull of the ship was first launched into the harbor and checked for leakage. After the ship was dry, secured and anchored, the outfitting and loading process began. Commenting on this, Severin writes:
We fitted out Sohar in one of the most spectacular harbours in the world, Muscat. . . . Surrounded by such an extraordinary mixture of history and pomp, it did not seem odd to be fitting out a medieval dhow, erecting the solid 61-foot mast with its characteristic forward rake, stringing up the coconut rope rigging, and hoisting the great spars. The silhouettes of sailors scrambling up Sohar's rigging, or inching their way out along the mainyard, looked utterly natural against the backdrop of the fortress bay. (p. 78)
Sohar was now the focus of frenetic activity. The two rubber dinghies which we would use as tenders on the voyage shuttled constantly back and forth carrying carpenters and stores, volunteer sailors and casual visitors. The ship rapidly began to fill up with the hundreds of items necessary for a sea voyage that would last seven or eight months. The forepeak was stuffed with bosun's stores--coil upon coil of rope of every size, from bundles of light lashing twine to 8-inch-thick spare halyards. There were dozens of extra blocks, each one lovingly carved out of a single chunk of wood and with their wooden wheels revolving on wooden pins. . . . There were spare sacks of lime for the day when we careened ship in a foreign port and smeared on a new coat of the traditional anti-fouling. There were tins of mutton fat, rank and nauseating, to mix with the lime or to grease the running ropes and tackles. There were marlin spikes and mallets, chests of carpenters's tools, odd lengths of spare timber, bolts of spare sailcloth, lengths of extra chain . . . There were no fewer than four anchors, one of them a traditional Arab grapnel anchor with its four curved claws. . . .
The food had to be chosen, packed and loaded. With a crew of twenty hard-working, hungry men there was not enough room to store all the provisions for the entire journey. I calculated that we would carry a basic store of rations, and supplement our supplies with purchases made at countries along the route. . . . We had boxes of nuts and dried fruit, hundreds of eggs preserved in grease and wrapped in sawdust, sacks of onions, dried peas, rice and packets of spice. For a variety there was a selection of tinned foods and sauces. Our cooking would be done on deck over a simple charcoal fire burning in a tray of sand. . . . In the days of Sindbad dates were the main item of cargo, as well as an essential source of food for the sailors; in fact, so important were dates as cargo that Arabs calculated the capacity of their ships by the number of sacks of dates they could carry. . . . The list of necessities was unending. Half a ton of charcoal for the cook box; . . . (pp. 80-82)
"Fresh fruit came aboard--a sure sign that Sohar was nearly ready to sail. . ." (p. 85)
[Quoted from Tim Severin, The Sindbad Voyage, New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1982] [For more excerpts see the commentaries on 1 Nephi 17:8; 18:8; 18:12; 18:13]
1 Nephi 18:6 We did go down into the ship ([Illustration]): A Model of Lehi's Ship? Lynn commissioned this exact 1/20 scale model of a larger 20 meter Arab dhow. This shipwright is from Eretheria Ethiopia, but did this work in 1985 in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Probably Nephi's ship looked like this. This model is now on display at LDS Business College, Salt Lake City, Utah. [Lynn A. Hilton and Hope A. Hilton, Discovering Lehi, p. 152]