The Shipwreck off Malta

other · 59–60 · Malta

The ship struck a shoal running into a bay with a beach, and the stern began to break up in the surf. The soldiers' plan was to kill the prisoners so that none could swim away; the centurion stopped them because he wanted to save Paul, and ordered everyone who could swim to go overboard first and the rest to follow on planks and pieces of the ship. All two hundred and seventy-six reached land. Acts names the island Melite and gives it three winter months: the fire of brushwood the islanders lit in the rain, the viper that fastened on Paul's hand and was shaken off into it, and the watchers who waited for him to swell up or drop dead and then decided he was a god. Publius, whom Acts calls the chief man of the island, gave them three days' lodging, and his father lay sick of fever and dysentery until Paul prayed and laid hands on him; after that the rest of the sick on the island came. They sailed in the spring in another Alexandrian grain ship, the one with the Twin Brothers for a figurehead (Acts 27:39-28:11).

Two hundred and seventy-six people ashore alive, three months on the island, and a healing that the islanders remembered longer than the wreck.