I tried the above experiment to bend light on 12/19/1998. I could not see any movement or distortion of the light. My experiment is small in scale compared to an entire ship. The length of the parallel wires could be longer.
Background: large masses seem to cause space to become curved and cause gravitational lensing of light. Astronomical images of stars getting brighter and two images of one distant galaxy have been explained by this.
Of course there is more to the story. Some sailors are said to have died and many others are said to have gone mad. It makes sense that this could have happened because a pulsating magnetic field is capable of inducing voltages in a watery object like a person. These voltages could cause headaches or false memories or madness in the brain. These voltages if strong enough could cook the body just as we, today, cook meat in a microwave.
There is still more to the story, but I am limiting my comments to these two points of the bending of light and harm to people. In any devices which I build, I plan to take care to not expose people to strong pulsating fields. If you want to read more about the Philadelpia Experiment there are books and web-sites.
If it proves possible to bend light by electromagnetic fields, an enormous telescope could be constructed which might resolve the disks of nearby stars and directly observe extra-solar planets.
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