The Search Begins!

In approximately 60 A.D., a ship carrying 276 men and a cargo of grain shipwrecked off the coast of Malta. Two of the passengers on that ship were the biblical writers Paul and Luke, who were on their way to Rome - Paul as a prisoner, and Luke as his attending physician and friend. Through Luke's meticulously detailed account of the voyage and shipwreck, as recorded in Acts chapter 27, we can today undertake a journey back in time to find the remains of that shipwreck. And even more precisely, we can attempt to find the four anchors described in the Bible that were left in the sea.

“When it was day, they did not recognize the land; but they observed a bay with a beach, onto which they planned to run the ship if possible. And they let go the anchors and left them in the sea, meanwhile loosing the rudder ropes; and they hoisted the mainsail to the wind and made for shore. But striking a place where two seas met, they ran the ship aground; and the prow stuck fast and remained immovable, but the stern was being broken up by the violence of the waves” (Acts 27:39-41).

For the past 500 years, tradition has held that the shipwreck of Paul occurred at St. Paul's Bay on the northeast shore of Malta, a view is held by the people of Malta today. But the biblical narrative and geography of the Mediterranean and Malta tell us that the site of the shipwreck must be located in somewhere other than the traditional site, where no evidence has been found, in spite of extensive research and exploration.

To solve this biblical mystery we need to review the biblical narrative written by Luke. Luke was a trusted historian and medical professional, whose careful attention to detail will prove invaluable in our quest. Even though Luke uses nautical terms which were understood at the time but have vague meaning today, extensive research involving weather, ocean topography, landmarks, and maritime lore, gives us a well-defined path of the ship that the Apostle Paul was sailing on in the Mediterranean Sea.

To begin charting the path of Paul's ship to its ultimate shipwreck site at Malta, we need to begin with Paul's arrest in Jerusalem, and his transfer to the port city of Caesarea on charges of inciting the Jews against Roman authority. Though he was innocent, Paul was not cleared by the authorities in Caesarea, so he appealed to Caesar in the world capital of Rome itself. When the time finally came for him to be transferred to Rome for trial, he and a contingent of other prisoners were all placed under the guard of a centurion named Julius, boarded a ship bound for Asia Minor, and began making their way to Rome. At Sidon on the coast of Lebanon Julius kindly allowed Paul to receive medical care, then they continued their journey to Myra, where they transferred to a huge Alexandrian cargo ship that would take them on to Rome.

It was as this freighter sailed along the southern coast of Crete that the voyage took a radical turn for the worse. As they were making progress in a westerly direction along the southern coast of Crete, the gale-force leading winds of a disastrous Mediterranean weather phenomenon known as a Euroclydon swept down from the northeast and slammed into the ship.

Nothing short of panic broke out among the hardened sailors on board. These storms were even more infamous in the first century than they are today. Josephus the historian was caught in the same kind of storm while traveling on a ship large enough to carry 600 passengers. In his chilling account we read that of the 600 souls that went into the water when the ship capsized, only 80 - including Josephus - were saved.
It is at this point that Luke's account becomes nearly phenomenal in its details, all of which perfectly fit the ocean geography we know today. As the ship was being blown out of the lee of Crete, the sailors desperately tried to tack her about in order to return to the safety of the port of Fair Havens they had just left. But their efforts were useless, and as the ship was driven hard into the open ocean, they had to turn their attention to surviving rather than sailing.

The ship was blown past an island called Clauda, which today is known as Gaudho. They were entirely at the mercy of the storm.

“So when the ship was caught, and could not head into the wind, we let her drive. And running under the shelter of an island called Clauda, we secured the skiff with difficulty” (vv. 15-16).

We know that they were blown on a straight course in line with the storm. Scripture tells us that after they were blown past Clauda, they used the ship's cables to undergird it so it would not be twisted and pounded to pieces by the heavy seas.

“. . . they used cables to undergird the ship” (v. 17).

Because they would have been blown in a precisely southwest direction, they would been on a crash course for the gulf of Syrte in northern Libya. In fact, verse 17 tells us they were:

“. . . fearing lest they should run aground on the Syrtis Sands.”