The Ship Is Lost, and Every Life Is Preserved

The “we” returns for the first time since 21:18: the writer sails with Paul. “Augustus’ band” is the Augustan cohort, a unit attested by inscriptions among the auxiliary troops of Syria. Julius was one of the commonest Roman names.

Adramyttium was a port on the Aegean coast near Troas, so the ship was heading home and the plan was to find an Italy-bound vessel on the way. Aristarchus was dragged into the Ephesian theatre in 19:29, and Paul later calls him “my fellowprisoner” (Colossians 4:10).

Sidon lay about seventy miles north of Caesarea, a day’s sail. “Courteously” is philanthropos, humanely. “His friends” may be the early believers’ name for one another. “To refresh himself” is literally to receive care, a phrase used of medical attention or provisions for the voyage.

Summer winds in the eastern Mediterranean blow steadily from the west and northwest. Sailing “under Cyprus” means keeping to its sheltered east and north side, the opposite of 21:3, when the ship passed south of the island with those same winds behind it.

They crept west along the coast of Asia Minor, using the land breezes and the westward current. Some manuscripts add that the crossing took fifteen days. Myra in Lycia was a major port of call for the grain fleet.

Ships of Alexandria carried Egypt’s wheat to feed Rome, and the cargo is confirmed in verse 38. The winds forced them north to the coast of Asia before they turned west. A centurion on state business could claim passage on a state grain ship.

Cnidus sits at the tip of a long peninsula in southwest Asia Minor, the last shelter before open sea. The run from Myra is about 130 miles; it took “many days”. Unable to hold their course, they turned south round Cape Salmone at Crete’s eastern end.

“Hardly” means with difficulty. Fair Havens, Kaloi Limenes, still carries the name on Crete’s south coast, and the ruins of Lasea were identified nearby in the nineteenth century. The place was real, small and exposed.

“The fast” is the Day of Atonement, in late September or early October. Ancient writers counted sailing risky after mid-September and the sea closed from about November. The Book of Acts tells the season by the Jewish calendar that Paul kept.

“I perceive” is theoreo, to observe and conclude, not a claim of revelation. Paul had already been shipwrecked three times and spent a night and a day in the deep (2 Corinthians 11:25). His own forecast includes loss of life, which the angel’s word in verse 22 will correct.

“Master” is kybernetes, the helmsman or captain; “owner” is naukleros, the shipowner or perhaps the contractor for the grain. On a state vessel the centurion was the senior officer, so the decision was his. He took the professionals’ advice, as most sensible men would.

“Not commodious” is anetheton, unsuitable. Phenice, about forty miles west, is identified with the bay at Loutro or at Phineka. The Greek says the harbour “looks down” the southwest and northwest winds, and scholars still argue whether it faced them or was sheltered from them.

A gentle south wind was exactly what they needed to round Cape Matala, a few miles to the west, and run for Phenice. “Supposing that they had obtained their purpose” is a phrase the whole chapter will overturn. They hugged the coast, close enough to see the shore.

“Against it” means down from it, a wind rushing off Crete’s mountains, where Mount Ida rises above 8,000 feet. “Tempestuous” is typhonikos, whirling, the source of “typhoon”. The oldest manuscripts read Eurakylon, a sailors’ hybrid of Greek Euros, east wind, and Latin Aquilo, north wind: a northeaster.

“Bear up into the wind” is antophthalmein, literally to look the wind in the eye. Ancient ships often had eyes painted on the bow. This one could not face the gale and was left to run before it.

Clauda, today Gavdos, lies about twenty-three miles south of Crete, and its lee gave a few minutes of calmer water. The ship’s boat, towed astern, was swamped and had to be hauled aboard. “We had much work” is the writer confessing to blistered hands.

“Helps” were probably cables, passed under the hull and tightened to hold the planks together, a practice called frapping. “Quicksands” is the Syrtis, the shoals off Libya that were the dread of every sailor. “Strake sail” may mean they lowered the gear or put out a drag to slow their drift.

The tense suggests they began jettisoning cargo and kept at it. The sailors of Jonah’s ship, caught in a Mediterranean storm while heading west, did the same: “cast forth the wares that were in the ship” (Jonah 1:5).

“With our own hands” brings the passengers into the work. “Tackling” is the ship’s gear, perhaps the great mainyard, a spar heavy enough to need every hand aboard. A few manuscripts have “they cast out” instead.

Without a compass, sailors steered by sun and stars; with both hidden for days they could not tell where they were. “Saved” is sozo, the Book of Acts’ word for salvation, used here and through the chapter in its plainest sense: staying alive.

“Long abstinence” is lack of food, not a religious fast: seasickness, spoiled stores and no fire to cook on. “Harm and loss” are hybris and zemia, the very nouns of Paul’s warning in verse 10, repeated so that everyone remembers who said them.

Paul revises his own forecast: in verse 10 he expected lives to be lost, and now he says none will be. “Be of good cheer” is euthymeo, a word that will return in verses 25 and 36.

The ship’s crew had their own gods; the vessel that later carries Paul from Malta is named after the Twin Brothers (28:11). Paul names his God by possession and service: the God “whose I am, and whom I serve”. “Stood by me” repeats 23:11.

“Must” is dei, the necessity already spoken in 23:11. “Hath given thee” is kecharistai, granted as a favour, the root of the word Paul refused in 25:11 when he would not be handed to his enemies as a favour. God grants the whole ship to Paul.

“I believe God” is pisteuo to theo, the phrase of Genesis 15:6 that Paul quotes in Romans 4:3, “Abraham believed God”. He stakes his credibility with 275 people on a word they have not heard.

Another “must”: even the island is part of the plan. It is not named until 28:1, and the promise includes the wreck as well as the rescue.

“Adria” in ancient usage meant the central Mediterranean between Greece, Italy, Sicily and Africa, not only today’s Adriatic. James Smith, a Scottish yachtsman, calculated in 1848 that a ship drifting from Clauda at the likely rate would reach Malta in about thirteen and a half days.

The sounding was made by a lead weight on a marked line. Twenty fathoms is 120 feet, fifteen is 90. Soundings off Point Koura at the entrance of St Paul’s Bay in Malta give nearly these depths, a match nineteenth century sailors checked for themselves.

Anchoring from the stern keeps the bow pointed toward land and the ship ready to be run ashore. “Wished for the day” is euchonto, which also means prayed: literally, they prayed for daylight.

“Under colour” means on pretence; the “foreship” is the bow. The ship’s boat was the only way off, and the sailors meant to take it for themselves and leave some 270 people aboard a vessel no one else could handle.

Paul speaks to the centurion and the soldiers, the men with swords, not to the sailors. “Ye” is pointed: the soldiers’ own survival depends on keeping the crew aboard. The promise of verse 24 did not cancel the need for seamen at dawn.

The soldiers do not argue; they cut the ropes and let the boat drift away, perhaps too hastily, since it might have helped at the landing. From this point no one has any way off except the ship itself.

“While the day was coming on” is the grey hour before dawn. Fourteen days “having taken nothing” means no proper meals rather than total starvation. “Take meat” simply means take food.

“Health” is soteria, the word for salvation, here the plain matter of having strength to swim. “Not an hair fall” is a proverb from 1 Samuel 14:45, and Jesus used it in Luke 21:18.

Paul says grace like any Jewish head of a household, in front of nearly three hundred mostly pagan men, and then eats first. The verbs, took, gave thanks, broke, are those of the feeding of the five thousand (Luke 9:16) and the meal at Emmaus (Luke 24:30).

“Of good cheer” is euthymoi, the adjective of the verb Paul used in verses 22 and 25. His words did not change their mood; seeing him eat did.

Two hundred and seventy-six is a large complement, but grain ships were big; Josephus says he was wrecked on a voyage to Rome with about six hundred aboard. One important manuscript reads “about seventy-six”. A head count was needed for rations and for the landing.

The wheat confirms this was a grain ship. Throwing it out raised the hull so it would ride over the shallows and run as far up the beach as possible. The cargo that was the whole reason for the voyage goes into the sea.

The sailors did not recognise the coast, because St Paul’s Bay lay off the usual approach to Malta’s main harbour. “Creek with a shore” is a bay with a beach, aigialos, the word for the Tyre shore in 21:5, the kind of ground a ship could be driven onto.

Three things are done together: the anchors were cut loose and left in the sea (the King James “taken up” is not quite right), the lashings on the two steering oars were freed, and the “mainsail”, artemon, more likely the small foresail, was raised to drive the bow in.

“A place where two seas met” is dithalassos, a bank or spit with water on both sides. At St Paul’s Bay a narrow channel separates the islet of Salmonetta from the shore, and the bottom there is mud over clay, which would grip a bow exactly as described.

A guard who let a prisoner escape could suffer the prisoner’s penalty, which is why Herod executed Peter’s guards (12:19) and the Philippian jailer drew his sword (16:27). The soldiers’ plan was brutal and, by their lights, prudent.

“Save” is diasozo, to bring safely through, the verb that returns in verse 44 and 28:1. The centurion who preferred the shipmaster’s advice in verse 11 now overrules his own men for Paul’s sake, and every prisoner lives because of one.

“Some on broken pieces of the ship” can also be read “on some of those from the ship”, carried on the backs of the crew. Either way the promise of verse 24 is kept to the last person: all 276 reach the beach.