Anonymous · 90 · sea

Acts 27 and 28, written by a man who was aboard. Paul appeals to Caesar and is shipped west under guard in the wrong season. They are driven fourteen days before a north-easter, the ship is broken up on a sandbar off Malta, and every one of the two hundred and seventy-six aboard gets ashore alive.

1. 1
   Caesarea

   Paul has invoked his right as a Roman citizen to be tried by Caesar, so the governor puts him on a ship with a centurion named Julius and a handful of other prisoners, late in the year and against the advice of anyone who sails.

2. 2
   Sidon

   The first port, where Julius lets him go ashore to see friends - one of several small kindnesses Luke records, in an account that is otherwise about wind and seamanship and the failure of both.

3. 3
   Myra

   They transfer at Myra in Lycia to an Alexandrian grain ship bound for Italy - a big vessel with two hundred and seventy-six people aboard, and the wrong ship to be on in October.

4. 4
   Fair Havens

   On the south coast of Crete, with the Fast already past and sailing dangerous. Paul says the voyage will end in loss of ship and lives. The centurion listens to the owner instead, and they run for a better harbour.

5. 5
   Malta

   A north-easter takes them for fourteen days with no sun or stars. They throw out the cargo, then the tackle, and strike a sandbar off an island they do not recognise - and every soul aboard reaches shore.

6. 6
   Syracuse

   Three months on Malta, and then an Alexandrian ship with the Twin Brothers as a figurehead that has wintered there - three days at Syracuse in Sicily as spring opens the sea lanes again.

7. 7
   Rhegium

   Across the strait to the toe of Italy, and a south wind next day - the last easy stretch of a voyage that has taken six months to cover what a good ship did in five weeks.

8. 8
   Puteoli

   The great grain port on the bay of Naples, where they find believers and stay a week - and where Paul steps onto Italian soil as a prisoner, which is how he had always expected to arrive.

9. 9
   Rome

   Up the Appian Way, met at Appii Forum and Three Taverns by people who have walked out to find him - and two years in his own lodging with a soldier chained to him, preaching to anyone who came.