Paul's journey to Rome: Three ships, one wreck, and a road at the end of it
Read it →Paul appealed to Caesar, and this is the journey that appeal cost him: Caesarea to Rome under guard, from the last safe weeks of one sailing season into the first of the next. Three ships carry him. A coaster from Adramyttium takes the party as far as Myra, working the sheltered side of Cyprus because the wind is against her the whole way. At Myra the centurion finds an Alexandrian grain ship bound for Italy, and she gets no further west than Cnidus before the weather turns her down under Crete. At Fair Havens the season has run out and the argument is about a harbour: Paul says winter here, the pilot and the owner say run forty miles west to Phoenix, and the majority carries it. They never reach Phoenix. A north-easter comes down off the Cretan hills and holds the ship for fourteen nights — past Cauda, in fear of the Syrtis, across a sea Luke calls Adria — and puts them on a beach nobody aboard recognises. It is Malta, and it takes Acts 28 to say so. Three months later a third ship, another Alexandrian that had wintered in the same harbour, works north in short hops: Syracuse, Rhegium, Puteoli. At Puteoli the voyage stops being a voyage, because Rome is a road from there. Luke names two places on that road, the Forum of Appius and Three Taverns, and names them only because that is how far a church which had never met Paul walked out to meet him. The journey ends without a verdict — two years in his own lodging, teaching without hindrance, and not a word about the trial he came for.
Regions on this map
Acts 27:1–5: a coaster out of Adramyttium works north and west with the wind against her, taking the sheltered side of Cyprus and the lee of the Cilician shore.
One day's run north from Caesarea, and the last kindness before the weather: Julius lets his prisoner go ashore to be cared for by friends.
Today: Saida, Lebanon
With the wind against them they took the sheltered side, passing east and north of the island instead of the direct run down its southern coast. Plotted at the island's centre.
Today: Cyprus (representative point)
The mainland north of Cyprus. Its westward current and its land breezes are the whole reason the long way round was the fast way.
Today: the Çukurova coast (point at Tarsus) (representative point)
The province Myra stands in, and the corner where coasting has to stop and the open crossing to Italy begins.
Today: south-west Turkey (representative point)
Where the two voyages are spliced. Myra was a regular landfall for the Alexandrian grain fleet, and the centurion transfers his prisoners onto one of its ships here.
Today: Demre, Turkey
The next stretch of that same sheltering coast, carrying them west towards Lycia.
Today: the Antalya coast (representative point)
Acts 27:6–8: a grain ship out of Alexandria makes Cnidus with difficulty, gives up the direct course to Italy, and runs down under Crete instead.
Days of slow work brought them level with this promontory port and no further. Beyond it the shelter of the coast runs out, and the wind decided the rest.
Today: Knidos, Turkey
The island the middle of the journey turns on: shelter first, then the hills the north-easter comes down from. Plotted at its centre.
Today: Crete (representative point)
The eastern cape of Crete, rounded to get into the island's lee — the second time in one voyage that an island is used as a wind-break.
Today: Cape Sideros, Crete (representative point)
Acts 27:9–13: whether to winter in an open roadstead or run forty miles west to a better one. Paul says stay; the pilot, the owner and the majority say go.
An open roadstead on the south coast: good enough to lie in for weeks, exposed enough to argue about. Paul's advice was to stay, and he gives it as a passenger, not a prophet.
Today: Kaloi Limenes, Crete
Luke fixes the anchorage by the town beside it, a mile or so east. That aside is the reason Fair Havens can still be pointed at on a map today.
Today: Lasaea, Crete
The better winter harbour the majority voted for, and the one place on this map scholars still divide over — Loutro on the east of the headland, or Phoinikas on the west. They reached neither.
Today: Loutro or Phoinikas, Crete (disputed)
Acts 27:14–44: the wind takes the ship off Crete and keeps it for fourteen nights. From here the text can give a direction and a fear, but not a position.
A small island some twenty-three miles south-west of Crete, and the last piece of ground the ship could work in the lee of. Everything after it is open sea.
Today: Gavdos, Greece (representative point)
Not somewhere they went but the thing they were afraid of: the shoals off the North African coast, dead to leeward of a north-easter. Fear of them is why the gear came down and the ship was let drift.
Today: the Gulf of Sidra, Libya (representative point)
Adria in the first century meant the open sea between Crete, Sicily and Malta, not the gulf the name has since narrowed to. The point here is the gazetteer's; the ship was a long way south of it.
Today: the Ionian Sea (representative point)
Acts 28:1–10: the beach gets a name, and with it the storm's track gets an end. The ship is gone and the sea is shut for the winter, so the island keeps them until it opens.
The beach at the end of Acts 27, which nobody aboard recognised, named in the first line of Acts 28. Two hundred sea miles west of Cauda, and near enough to where a fortnight's drift before a north-easter would put a ship that the wreck is the strongest evidence the storm account came from someone aboard. Plotted at the island's centre.
Today: Malta (representative point)
Acts 28:11–13: a third ship, another Alexandrian, goes up the coast in short hops — three days at Syracuse, a day waiting at Rhegium, and then a south wind that does the rest in two.
Three days on the Sicilian coast. Luke records the stop and not the reason; a ship working north this early in the season waits where it can for a wind she can use.
Today: Siracusa, Sicily
The port Rome's grain came through, and where this voyage stops being a voyage: from here the city is a road. A week with the brothers found there, and then they walk.
Today: Pozzuoli, Italy
The toe of Italy, at a strait that has to be timed rather than merely sailed. They lay here a day, and the south wind that came up next morning made the last run possible.
Today: Reggio Calabria, Italy
Acts 28:14–16: the sea has finished with the story and the last stretch is walked. The two places named on that road are the two where Rome's Christians had come out to meet him.
The end of the journey. For forty-four verses and a shipwreck the destination is only ever called Italy; Rome is not named until the road is under their feet. Luke then says they came to it twice — once with the last stretch still ahead of them, and again when they were actually inside it.
Today: Rome, Italy
A staging post on the Appian Way, forty-three Roman miles short of the city, where the first party out from Rome met the road. Not a place Paul chose to stop at but a distance somebody else was willing to walk.
Today: Foro Appio, Italy
Ten miles nearer Rome than the Forum, and the second group. Named together, the two of them measure how far a church that had never seen Paul came out to meet him.
Today: Tres Tabernae, near Cisterna di Latina
Places the voyage names for reasons other than putting in at them — two ships' home ports, a fellow passenger's home city, the coast the first ship was working back towards, and the city the case began in. Italy belongs here too: it is named twice, both times as somewhere they are still trying to get to.
The destination, named in the first verse and again when the grain ship is found, and never once after that — by the time the party is standing in it Luke is naming towns instead. Both verses that name it are verses in which the ship is still trying to reach it.
no point of its own; the gazetteer offers Rome, which this journey reaches under its own name
Not a port of call but the first ship's home town, on the Asian coast opposite Lesbos; she was working her way back towards it, which is why she could only be borrowed as far as Myra.
Today: Ören, Turkey, near Edremit
The Roman province the Adramyttian ship was coasting home through. It is her itinerary, not Paul's: his party leaves it at Myra.
Today: western Turkey (representative point)
Named for a passenger rather than a port: Aristarchus the Macedonian, who had travelled with Paul since Ephesus and is still on deck for the wreck.
Today: Thessaloniki, Greece
Never visited, and named twice: two of the three ships in this journey are registered there. The grain ship carried Egypt's wheat, owed to Rome and thrown overboard off Malta; the ship that finishes the voyage had wintered in the same harbour and came from the same port.
Today: Alexandria, Egypt
Named in Paul's own account of how he came to be here: the city he was handed over in, at the far end of a map his case has now crossed from one side to the other.
Today: Jerusalem
The province the letters did not come from. Rome's Jewish leaders tell Paul they have had no word about him from home, which is the nearest this journey comes to saying how far ahead of his own case he has travelled.
no point of its own; the gazetteer offers Jerusalem, which is on this map already
Acts 27–28, verse by verse
Acts 27
- Acts 27:1And when it was decided that we should sail for , they delivered Paul and some other prisoners to a centurion of the Augustan Cohort named Julius.
- Acts 27:2And embarking in a ship of , which was about to sail to the ports along the coast of , we put to sea, accompanied by Aristarchus, a Macedonian from .
- Acts 27:3The next day we put in at . And Julius treated Paul kindly and gave him leave to go to his friends and be cared for.
- Acts 27:4And putting out to sea from there we sailed under the lee of , because the winds were against us.
- Acts 27:5And when we had sailed across the open sea along the coast of and , we came to in .
- Acts 27:6There the centurion found a ship of sailing for and put us on board.
- Acts 27:7We sailed slowly for a number of days and arrived with difficulty off , and as the wind did not allow us to go farther, we sailed under the lee of off .
- Acts 27:8Coasting along it with difficulty, we came to a place called , near which was the city of .
- Acts 27:12And because the harbor was not suitable to spend the winter in, the majority decided to put out to sea from there, on the chance that somehow they could reach , a harbor of , facing both southwest and northwest, and spend the winter there.
- Acts 27:13Now when the south wind blew gently, supposing that they had obtained their purpose, they weighed anchor and sailed along , close to the shore.
- Acts 27:14But soon a tempestuous wind, called the northeaster, struck down from the land.
- Acts 27:16Running under the lee of a small island called , we managed with difficulty to secure the ship's boat.
- Acts 27:17After hoisting it up, they used supports to undergird the ship. Then, fearing that they would run aground on the , they lowered the gear, and thus they were driven along.
- Acts 27:21Since they had been without food for a long time, Paul stood up among them and said, “Men, you should have listened to me and not have set sail from and incurred this injury and loss.
- Acts 27:27When the fourteenth night had come, as we were being driven across the , about midnight the sailors suspected that they were nearing land.
Acts 28
- Acts 28:1After we were brought safely through, we then learned that the island was called .
- Acts 28:11After three months we set sail in a ship that had wintered in the island, a ship of , with the twin gods as a figurehead.
- Acts 28:12Putting in at , we stayed there for three days.
- Acts 28:13And from there we made a circuit and arrived at . And after one day a south wind sprang up, and on the second day we came to .
- Acts 28:14There we found brothers and were invited to stay with them for seven days. And so we came to .
- Acts 28:15And the brothers there, when they heard about us, came as far as the and to meet us. On seeing them, Paul thanked God and took courage.
- Acts 28:16And when we came into , Paul was allowed to stay by himself, with the soldier who guarded him.
- Acts 28:17After three days he called together the local leaders of the Jews, and when they had gathered, he said to them, “Brothers, though I had done nothing against our people or the customs of our fathers, yet I was delivered as a prisoner from into the hands of the Romans.
- Acts 28:21And they said to him, “We have received no letters from about you, and none of the brothers coming here has reported or spoken any evil about you.
- Acts 28:30He lived there two whole years at his own expense, and welcomed all who came to him,