§ 6. The voyage was very slow as far as Cnidus, at the S.W. headland of Caria," where "they lost the advantages of a favoring current, a weather-shore, and smooth water, and encountered the full force of the adverse wind as they opened the Ægaan." They made Cnidus with difficulty, and, finding it impossible to pursue their direct course for Cythera (off the southern point of Peloponnesus) against the N.W. wind, they ran down to the southward, and, doubling Salmone, the eastern headland of Crete, they beat up with difficulty under the lee of the island, as far as the fine harbor, near Lasæa, which still bears its ancient name of the Fair Havens.29 Beyond this the coast runs out to the south in the headland of Cape Matala, on doubling which they would have met the full force of the N.W. wind over an open sea and on a lee shore; so that they were altogether wind-bound, and remained here a long time. Meanwhile the navigation had grown dangerous, for it was past the season of the Great Jewish Fast (the Day of Atonement), which fell this year exactly at the autumnal equinox (Sept. 23d), the limit fixed by ancient writers to sea voyages. Paul now interposed the first of his warnings, in terms which imply that he spoke under divine guidance, as well as with much former experience of " perils in the sea:"30" Sirs, I perceive that this voyage will be with hurt and much damage, not only of the lading and ship, but also of our lives." But the centurion, with whom the decision rested, preferred the judgment of the owner and the master of the ship." Fair Penrose calculates her burden at upward of 500 tons. 28 Cnidus is mentioned in 1 Macc. xv. 23, as one of the Greek cities which contained Jewish residents in the second century before the Christian era. It was a city of great consequence, situated at the extreme S.W. of the peninsula of Asia Minor, on a promontory now called Cape Crio, which projects between the islands of Cos and Rhodes (see Acts xxi. 1). Cape Crio is in fact an island, so joined by an artificial causeway to the mainland as to form two harbors, one on the N., the other on the S. The latter was the larger, and its moles were noble constructions. All the remains of Cnidus show that it must have been a city of great magnificence. 66 29 Acts xxvii. 7, 8. Kahoì Aíμeves, now Διμεόνες Καλούς. The ruins of Lasæa, still bearing the same name, were discovered by a yachting party in 1856. Mr. Lewin calculates the voyage from Sidon to Cnidus at not less than a month, and thence to Fair Havens about a week, bringing us to about the 26th of September. 30 2 Cor. xi. 26. 31 That St. Paul was allowed to give advice at all implies that he was already held in a consideration very unusual for a prisoner in the custody of soldiers." (Howson.) That slavery to the letter which finds a contradiction between the Apostle's first warning and the ultimate saving of every soul on board, is best answered by reference to the passage, "God hath given thee all them that sail with thee" Havens was incommodious to winter in, and the majority advised attempting to run for Phoenix, a harbor sheltered alike from the N.W. and S.W. winds, and described by modern sailors as the only secure harbor, in all winds, on the south coast of Crete.32 § 7. It was about the 18th of October when the mariners were tempted out of Fair Havens by a soft south wind, which would enable them to double C. Matala (only 5 miles distant), and then to make a fair run of 35 miles to Port Phonix. They had already weathered the cape, and were keeping close under the land," when, without a moment's warning, an E.N.E. wind came sweeping down the gullies of Mount Ida, "descending from the lofty hills in heavy squalls and eddies" with all the fury of a typhoon. The sailors, accustomed to those seas, recognized their dreaded enemy by its well-known name Euroclydon. Unable to bear up into the wind, they could only let the ship scud before the gale." 34 (ver. 24). Their lives were really forfeit to the commander's rashness, but they were given back to the Apostle's prayers. 32 Phoenix is called Phenice by our translators, who perhaps meant the word to be pronounced Phénice, in two syllables, as distinguished from Phenice (i. e., Phænicia, Acts xi. 19). The name is doubtless derived from the Greek word for the palm-tree, which was indigenous in Crete. The positions assigned by Ptolemy and Pliny, the preservation of the name Phinika in the neighborhood, and the proximity of Clauda, concur with other evidence to identify the harbor with Lutro, where, contrary to the former opinion that there was no safe anchorage on the south coast of Crete, the survey of 1852 found excellent soundings, combined with a perfect shelter from the whole compass of the westerly winds. This fact concurs with the very purpose of the mariners, to prove that the words βλέποντα (looking, not lying as in the A.V.) κατὰ Λίβα καὶ κατὰ χῶρον can not possibly mean exposed to the S. W. and N.W. winds. This description is not that of St. Luke himself, who never entered the harbor, but that of the sailors, who spoke from their own point of view; and the harbor, viewed from the sea toward the land which encloses it, would look toward the S.W. and N.W. Or, as Mr. Smith suggests, Karà may mean down the direction of the winds blowing from those quarters. (See the argument more fully stated by Dr. Howson, with the chart and soundings of Lutro, St. Paul, c. xxiii.) 38 Acts xvii. 13. άσσον παρελέγονTo Tǹ Kρhτη, where the Vulgate has strangely (and quite wrongly) transformed the comparative adverb into a proper name, cum sustulissent de Asson, legebant Cretam. 3 ἀντοφθαλμεῖν, literally into the wind's eye. 35 Acts xxvii. 14, 15. Μετ' οὐ πολὺ δὲ ἔβαλε κατ' αὐτῆς (sc. Κρήτης) aveμos TVOWVIKÒS, Kaλovμεvos Ev poкλźć wv (Vulg. Euroaquilo, i. e., north-easter, a Latin name which the Greek sailors not understanding might easily convert the ending into κλύδων, a billow; and some of the best MSS. have Evpakúλwv). That κατ' αὐτῆς means “down from the land of Crete," and not "against it" (i. e., the ship, A.V. and Smith), is a grammatical necessity, and Admiral Penrose (as quoted in the text) saw this meaning even without refer 36 In this course they were carried under the lee of a small island named Clauda, about 20 miles from the coast of Crete.s Under its shelter they got the boat on board, always a difficult matter in a gale," and especially when it was doubtless full of water. This could only be done at all by bringing the ship's head round to the wind, a fact of which the importance will presently appear. The next preparation is one of the most interesting points in the whole narrative; "they used helps, undergirding the ship." The ancient ships were peculiarly liable to loosen their frame-work and start their planks, not only from the imperfections of their build, but from the strain upon the hull caused by the single mast with its large square-sail. Hence the frequent foundering at sea, of which we have other cases in the shipwreck of Jonah, and in that of Josephus on his way to Rome four years later, which forms a striking parallel to the voyage of St. Paul. As a precaution against this danger, ships were provided with cables or chains, which could be passed round the hull at right angles (not, as some have supposed, from stem to stern), as helps" to its strength, the ends being secured on deck; and this was the process described as "undergirding 66 in modern times (Smith, Voyage and Shipwreck, pp. 97, 144; Conybeare and Howson, vol. ii. pp. 401, 412). 36 The position of Clauda is nearly due west of C. Matala, and nearly due south of Phoenix. ence to the Greek. The whole ac- duration of the gale ("the fourteenth count of the sudden burst and long night," ver. 27), the overclouded continuance of the typhoon is won-state of the sky ("neither sun nor derfully confirmed by modern voy- stars appearing," ver. 20), and even agers. Captain Spratt, R.N., after the heavy rain which concluded the leaving Fair Havens with a light storm (rov vεTÒv, xxviii. 2) could easisoutherly wind, fell in with "a strongly be matched with parallel instances northerly breeze, blowing direct from Mount Ida." Next, the wind is described as being like a typhoon or whirlwind (Tupovikós, A. V. "tempestuous "); and the same authority speaks of such gales in the Levant as being generally accompanied by terrific gusts and squalls from those high mountains." It is also observable that the change of wind is exactly what might have been expected; for Captain J. Stewart, R.N., observes, in his remarks on the Archipelago, that "it is always safe to anchor under the lee of an island with a northerly wind, as it dies away gradually, but it would be extremely dangerous with southerly winds, as they almost invariably shift to a violent northerly wind" (Purdy's Sailing Directory, pt. ii. p. 61). The long 37 Acts xxvii. 16: ioxvoaμεv πEPIκατεῖς γενέσθαι τῆς σκάφης, ἣν ἀρανTεç, etc. These words seem to imply that the passengers helped. The sailors, in their confidence of a short and smooth run to Phoenix, had left the boat to tow astern. It is worth while observing that this large Alexandrian corn-ship, with 276 souls on board, seems to have had only one boat. 38 Virgil, himself a voyager, assigns this cause for the loss of the fleet of Æneas, "Laxis laterum compagibus omnes (Æn. i. 122). 9 39 the ship.' Another motive for this precaution was the risk that, in that narrow part of the Mediterranean, the ship should be driven across to the Libyan coast, and fall upon the quicksands of the Great Syrtis, where the undergirding would delay her going to pieces. 40 To keep the vessel from this dangerous course, and to make her more steady, they "lowered the gear, and so were driven." 41 This can not mean that the ship scudded before the wind; for that course would have driven her right on the Syrtis, if she had not first been swamped by the sea breaking over her stern; but that she lay to under a storm-sail with her starboard (or right) side to the wind, the very position in which she had been brought up to the wind to take the ov. 39 Acts xxvii. 17: Bonocía ç| Lucan, Phars. ix. 431). It is most ἐχρῶντο, ὑποζωννύντες τὸ πλοῖ- to our purpose here, however, to reThe process is in the English fer to Apollonius Rhodius, who was navy called frapping, and many in- familiar with all the notions of the stances could be given where it has Alexandrian sailors. In the 9th been found necessary in modern ex- book of his Argonautica, 1232-1237, perience. Ptolemy's great ship car- he supplies illustrations of the passage ried twelve of these undergirders before us, in more respects than one(VTоluara); and they are mention- in the sudden violence of the terrible ed in the inscriptions giving an in- north wind, in its long duration, and ventory of the Athenian navy. Va- in the terror which the sailors felt of. rious allusions to the practice are to being driven into the Syrtis. There be found in the classical writers (e. g. were properly two Syrtes-the eastern Thuc. i. 29; Plat. Repub. x. 3, p. or larger, now called the Gulf of Si616; Hor. Od. i. 14. 6). On the first dra, and the western or smaller, now of these passages Dr. Arnold observes the Gulf of Cabes. It is the former that "the Russian ships taken in the to which our attention is directed in Tagus in 1808 were kept together in this passage of the Acts. The best this manner, in consequence of their modern account of this part of the age and unsound condition." African coast is that which is given (in his Memoir on the Mediterranean, pp. 87-91, 186-190) by Admiral Smyth, who was himself the first to survey this bay thoroughly, and to divest it of many of its terrors. 41 40 Acts xxvii. 17: poßovμevoí te μǹ εiç TM ZUρTIV EKπÉσwol (A. V. quicksands), the broad and deep bight on the North African coast between Carthage and Cyrene. The name is derived from Sert, an Arabic word χαλάσαντες τὸ σκεῦος οὕτως ἐφέfor a desert. For two reasons this povro. In ver. 30, the word xaλaovregion was an object of peculiar dread Tv is used again for letting down to the ancient navigators of the Med-the boat by loosening her tackle. The iterranean, partly because of the drifting sands and the heat along the shore itself, but chiefly because of the shallows and the uncertain currents of water in the bay. So notorious were these dangers, that they became a commonplace with the poets (see Hor. Od. i. 22, 5; Ov. Fast. iv. 499; Virg. Æn. i. 111; Tibull. iii. 4, 91; meaning here seems to be that the large square-sail was let down on deck, together with the heavy tophamper of ropes and pulleys (σKεvoc) that held it up. The extra fairweather sails, if such there were, would either have been taken in or carried away at the beginning of the hurricane. |