[Note: This section has been examined in greater detail in our book, In This Way We Came to Rome: With Paul on the Appian Way (Lexham Press, 2024), pp. 1–7]
After two years of detention in Caesarea Maritima, Paul began his trip to Rome as one of several prisoners entrusted to a centurion named Julius (Acts 27:1). In his party was also the Thessalonian Christian Aristarchus. The first part of the journey was by sea, and Luke, the author of Acts, says that it began on a small ship whose home port was Adramyttium on the southeast coast of the Troad. It would normally follow along the coast of Syria, then Asia Minor, putting in each night at one of the ports as it made its way westward (27:3). Instead of following the coastline around the northeast corner of the Mediterranean, the ship could alternatively take a short-cut by crossing to Cyprus and then proceed directly to the coast of Cilicia. The trip began routinely with the first night’s stop at Sidon, where Paul went ashore and was given hospitality by the local Christians (27:3).
Sometime after setting sail the next day, the captain opted to cross to Cyprus, but because of strong northwesterly winds that arose, he opted to use the island for protection and follow its southern coast (27:4). Since Luke does not mention any of the stops on this leg of the journey it is likely they did not put in at Salamis or Paphos where there were likely Christian communities by this time. At the western end of the island, the ship turned north and crossed back to the western coast of Cilicia and then Pamphylia (27:5) and then on the Lycian port city of Myra. Because of the contrary winds the trip from Sidon to Myra may have taken two weeks, as stated in the Western text of Acts (B. Metzger, 1975, 497).1
Since their ship would shortly round the western end of Caria and head home northwards along the coast of the province of Asia, centurion Julius took his prisoners ashore at Myra and booked passage on a mammoth Alexandrian grain ship (see v. 37) bound for Italy (27:6). The contrary winds meant that the huge ship made slow progress in the following days but finally made it to Cnidos on the western coast of the Aegean (27:7). Luke writes that here too “the wind did not allow us to hold our course,” i.e., straight west through the Dodecanese islands and on to Greece. Instead the ship was forced southwards so that for a second time it could use a large island for protection, this time Crete. It sailed west about halfway along the southern coast (c. 90 miles) before reaching the small harbor town known as Fair Havens (modern Kaloi Limenes).
Despite Paul’s warnings that further sea travel at this late season would be costly for the ship, crew, and passengers, Julius and the ship owners decided to push on and try to make it at least another 50 miles to the larger harbor of Phoenix (modern Loutro) (27:9-12). When the wind improved, they set sail but did not get very far before hurricane force winds arose from the northeast and began driving the ship from the shelter of the island (27:13-15). Luke then gives a detailed description of the ship’s tortuous journey over the following two weeks (27:16-44). After mentioning the ship passing by the small island of Cauda (modern Gavdopoula), 15 miles straight south of Phoenix, Luke was unable to give any further geographical description of the ship’s path until the ship was wrecked 500 miles further west on the sandbars off the island of Malta.
The actual site of the wreck has long been disputed. Local legends point to several locations.
Created by GLT
Last updated 09/4/2026 by JSW
- B. Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, Second Edition (New York: United Bible Societies, 1994), 440. ↩︎