Are there sunken anchors from Paul's ship off the coast of Malta?

[MarcoPolo]

According to The NAB, in Acts 27:40, the anchors of Paul’s ship were cut off and left in the Mediterranean Sea near Malta.

The RSV-CE also says this.

The Douay-Rheims reads to me that the anchors were “taken up”, and it’s a little unclear if they were then thrown back into the sea.

But anyway, has anyone heard of any archaeological evidence for this? Have these anchors been found or have any of the other pieces of the ship that broke up when they ran aground?

 

[DaveBj]

The anchors mentioned in that passage were “sea anchors,” sort of like canvas buckets dropped into the water from the stern of the boat to slow it down. They weren’t drop-to-the-bottom-and-stick anchors.

The problem was that the ship was being driven such a direction that the depth of the water was decreasing. They knew they were approaching land, and they needed to slow the boat down until they could see where they were going. A stick-to-the-bottom anchor would have just have snapped its rope.

DaveBj

 

[Fidelis]

But anyway, has anyone heard of any archaeological evidence for this? Have these anchors been found or have any of the other pieces of the ship that broke up when they ran aground?

I haven’t heard of anyone claiming to find artifacts of this specific wreck and doubt seriously if anyone ever will that can definitively identify it.

If this incident occured in open water, finding such this specific small wreck would be like finding a needle in a Mediteranean-size haystack.

Even if one could find it, since the ship was not named in the biblical account, it would be hard to identify it as the specific ship Paul was on. Lacking a durable sign or passenger manifest found with it that said something like “Saul of Tarsus was here” it’d be well nigh improbable.

 

[MarcoPolo]

The anchors mentioned in that passage were “sea anchors,” sort of like canvas buckets dropped into the water from the stern of the boat to slow it down.

Is that historical info. for which you could give me a reference?

If this incident occured in open water, finding such this specific small wreck would be like finding a needle in a Mediteranean-size haystack.

Verse 28 says they were 15 fathoms from the shore, coming apparently from the southeast.

 

[DaveBj]

Is that historical info. for which you could give me a reference?

I will look, but not tonight.

Verse 28 says they were 15 fathoms from the shore, coming apparently from the southeast.

A fathom is a measure of water depth, not a measure of linear distance. It was dark; they couldn’t see the shore, so they had no way of knowing how far they were from it. That was why they threw out the brakes and wished that daylight would come.

DaveBj

 

[mommyof4]

Even if one could find it, since the ship was not named in the biblical account, it would be hard to identify it as the specific ship Paul was on. Lacking a durable sign or passenger manifest found with it that said something like “Saul of Tarsus was here” it’d be well nigh improbable.

I’m sure it would be on the History Channel if they did find it.

 

[Joe_Kelley]

I would imagine that there are numerous anchors, and ships, littering the bottom in that area.

 

[MarcoPolo]

A fathom is a measure of water depth, not a measure of linear distance. It was dark; they couldn’t see the shore, so they had no way of knowing how far they were from it. That was why they threw out the brakes and wished that daylight would come.

I would imagine that there are numerous anchors, and ships, littering the bottom in that area.

True, I misspoke on the fathoms. Still it seemed they were using the depth to guess how far from land they were. In other words, it wouldn’t quite be like finding a needle in the Mediterranean.

I was just asking if anyone ever heard of an expedition that made claim to raise these artifacts. If there were extra-Biblical traditions or stories regarding that voyage from the passengers or such, the anchors may have been identifiable.

 

[MarcoPolo]

Not sure how reliable this is, but here is an article from 2002 claiming that the anchors were recovered. The anchors are also described in this way: “the anchors in question would have been huge, lead-and-wooden Roman-style anchors common on huge freighters like the one Paul sailed on.”

Apparently one of the local fisherman discovered four lead anchor stocks first, and passed along one of the anchor stocks to a local relative, presumably in Malta.