The Early Church · c. AD 59–60
Chapter 30
Shipwreck
Now I exhort you to cheer up, for there will be no loss of life among you, but only of the ship.
For parents
This chapter tells of a storm at sea that lasts many days, until all hope of being saved is gone (Acts 27:14–20). Sailors try to escape from the ship in its small boat (27:30–32). Then comes the shipwreck itself: the ship runs aground, and its stern begins to break up in the waves (27:41). The soldiers plan to kill the prisoners so that none can swim away, but the centurion stops them, and everyone on board reaches land safely (27:42–44). It is all told plainly, with no more detail than the text gives.
had appealed to , and had answered, “You will go to Caesar.” Once it had been settled that we would sail for Italy, they put Paul and some other prisoners under the guard of , a of the company of soldiers called the Augustan band.
We got on board a ship from Adramyttium that was going to sail to places on the coast of , and we set sail. , a Macedonian from , was with us.
The next day we stopped at . Julius treated Paul kindly and let him visit his friends and refresh himself.
Setting out from there, we sailed in the shelter of , since we had the wind against us. We sailed across the sea along the coast of and , and we came to Myra, a city of Lycia.
There the centurion found a ship from that was sailing for Italy, and he put us on board.
For many days we sailed slowly, and we had a hard time getting as far as Cnidus. The wind kept us from going on, so we sailed in the shelter of , near Salmone. It was hard going along its coast, and we reached a place called Fair Havens, close to the city of Lasea.
A long time had passed, and the voyage was now dangerous, because had already gone by. Paul warned them. “Men,” he said, “I can see that this voyage will bring harm and much loss, not only to the cargo and the ship, but to our lives too.”
But the centurion paid more attention to the ship’s captain and its owner than to what Paul said.
The harbor wasn’t a good place to spend the winter, so most of them advised sailing on from there, to see if they could somehow reach Phoenix and stay the winter there. Phoenix is a harbor on Crete that faces southwest and northwest.
When the south wind blew softly, they thought they had what they wanted. They raised the anchor and sailed along Crete, keeping close to the shore.
But before long a stormy wind came beating down from the shore. It was the wind called , a northeaster. The ship was caught in it and couldn’t turn into the wind. We gave up and let it drive us along.
As we ran along in the shelter of a small island called Clauda, we only just managed to get control of the ship’s small boat. When they had hauled it aboard, they used cables to help strengthen the ship. They were afraid of running aground on the Syrtis sand bars, so they lowered the sea anchor, gear that drags in the water behind a ship. And so the ship was driven along.
We were struggling hard against the storm, and the next day they began throwing things overboard. On the third day they threw out the ship’s gear with their own hands.
Neither sun nor stars shone on us for many days, and a great storm kept pressing down on us. By now all hope that we would be saved had been taken away.
They had gone without eating for a long while. Then Paul stood up in the middle of them. “Men,” he said, “you ought to have listened to me. You shouldn’t have set sail from Crete. Then you would have been spared this harm and loss.
“Now I urge you to cheer up, because none of you will die. Only the ship will be lost.
“Last night an stood by me, an angel of my God, the God I belong to, the one I serve. The angel told me, ‘Don’t be afraid, Paul. You must stand before Caesar. Look, God has given you everyone who is sailing with you.’
“So cheer up, men! I believe God: it will be just the way I was told. But we must run aground on some island.”
The fourteenth night came while we were being driven back and forth in the Adriatic Sea. About midnight the sailors began to guess that they were coming near some land.
They measured the depth of the water and found it was twenty fathoms, a hundred twenty feet deep. After a little while they checked again and found fifteen fathoms, ninety feet.
They were afraid that we would run aground on rocks, so they dropped four anchors off the stern, at the back of the ship, and wished for daylight.
The sailors were trying to get away from the ship. They had lowered the small boat into the sea, pretending that they meant to drop anchors from the bow, at the front of the ship.
“Unless these men stay in the ship,” Paul said to the centurion and to the soldiers, “you can’t be saved.”
Then the soldiers cut the boat’s ropes and let it fall away.
When it was almost morning, Paul begged them all to eat something. “Today is the fourteenth day you have waited and gone hungry, eating nothing at all,” he said. “So I beg you to eat something. This is for your safety. Not a hair will be lost from any of your heads.”
With that, he took bread and gave thanks to God with all of them watching. Then he broke it and began to eat.
Now they all cheered up, and they took some food as well. In all, we were two hundred seventy-six people on the ship.
When they had eaten enough, they made the ship lighter, throwing the wheat out into the sea.
When it was day, they didn’t know what land it was. But they caught sight of a bay with a beach, and they decided to try to run the ship onto it.
They let the anchors go and left them in the sea, untying the rudder ropes at the same time. Then they raised the front sail to the wind and steered for the beach.
But they came to a place where two seas met, and they ran the ship aground. The bow struck and couldn’t be moved, but the stern began to break up as the waves pounded it.
The soldiers planned to kill the prisoners, so that not one of them could swim off and escape.
But the centurion wanted to save Paul, and he stopped them. He commanded those who could swim to throw themselves overboard first and go toward the land. The others were to come after them, some on planks and some on other things from the ship. And so they all came safely to land.