Acts 27:21–44

²¹After those on board had gone a long time without food, Paul stood before them and said, “Men, you should have listened to me and not have sailed from Crete; then we would have avoided all this damage and loss. ²²But now I beg you, take heart! Not one of you will lose your life; only the ship will be lost. ²³For last night an angel of the God to whom I belong and whom I worship came to me ²⁴and said, ‘Don’t be afraid, Paul! You must stand before the Emperor. And God in his goodness to you has spared the lives of all those who are sailing with you.’ ²⁵So take heart, men! For I trust in God that it will be just as I was told. ²⁶But we will be driven ashore on some island.” ²⁷It was the fourteenth night, and we were being driven about in the Mediterranean by the storm. About midnight the sailors suspected that we were getting close to land. ²⁸So they dropped a line with a weight tied to it and found that the water was 40 metres deep; a little later they did the same and found that it was 30 metres deep. ²⁹They were afraid that the ship would go on the rocks, so they lowered four anchors from the back of the ship and prayed for daylight. ³⁰Then the sailors tried to escape from the ship; they lowered the boat into the water and pretended that they were going to put out some anchors from the front of the ship. ³¹But Paul said to the army officer and soldiers, “If the sailors don’t stay on board, you have no hope of being saved.” ³²So the soldiers cut the ropes that held the boat and let it go.

³³Just before dawn, Paul begged them all to eat some food: “You have been waiting for fourteen days now, and all this time you have not eaten anything. ³⁴I beg you, then, eat some food; you need it in order to survive. Not even a hair of your heads will be lost.” ³⁵After saying this, Paul took some bread, gave thanks to God before them all, broke it, and began to eat. ³⁶They took heart, and every one of them also ate some food. ³⁷There was a total of 276ⁿ of us on board. ³⁸After everyone had eaten enough, they lightened the ship by throwing all the wheat into the sea.

The Shipwreck

³⁹When day came, the sailors did not recognize the coast, but they noticed a bay with a beach and decided that, if possible, they would run the ship aground there. ⁴⁰So they cut off the anchors and let them sink in the sea, and at the same time they untied the ropes that held the steering oars. Then they raised the sail at the front of the ship so that the wind would blow the ship forward, and we headed for shore. ⁴¹But the ship hit a sandbank and went aground; the front part of the ship got stuck and could not move, while the back part was being broken to pieces by the violence of the waves.

⁴²The soldiers made a plan to kill all the prisoners, in order to keep them from swimming ashore and escaping. ⁴³But the army officer wanted to save Paul, so he stopped them from doing this. Instead, he ordered those who could swim to jump overboard first and swim ashore; ⁴⁴the rest were to follow, holding on to the planks or to some broken pieces of the ship. And this was how we all got safely ashore.