The way of a ship in the midst of the sea (Acts 27)

Acts chapter 27 is a bit of a change in that the SAB doesn't have much to say, but it's not marked as "boring stuff", but that's because this is one of the more action-packed chapters of Acts. Finally, Paul is shipped off to Rome, but it's not at all an easy journey.

So Paul and some other prisoners are handed over to a centurion named Julius to sail to Italy. They enter into a ship to sail up the coast of Asia Minor. After the first day, they dock at Sidon, where Paul is allowed to go ashore and visit with friends. (It seems that throughout Paul's imprisonment they keep him in chains as a matter of course, but don't really consider him a flight risk, because he's always given plenty of liberty.) They switch ships eventually, and they keep running into difficult weather. When they are in port at Lasea, Paul informs Julius that if they set out again, bad things are going to happen to the ship, but the captain of the ship says they can handle the weather, and Julius of course believes the sailor over the prisoner. They plan to simply sail to another harbor of Crete that's more suitable to wait out the winter in.

Once they are out on the sea, however, a strong wind whips up so much that they have to simply let the ship be driven by it. They try to lighten the ship, even by the third day of storm getting so desperate that they throw the ship's tackle into the sea. They go for days without seeing a clear sky, and then finally one day Paul stands up and tells them that in the night he had a vision of an angel who told him that everyone on the ship will survive the storm, but will be shipwrecked on an island. (The SAB calls this vision absurd, although it's pretty standard fare for the New Testament.) After fourteen days, they find themselves coming into shallow water, and some of the men attempt to leave on a lifeboat, but Paul tells Julius that they will only be saved if everyone stays on board, so the soldiers cut away the lifeboat. Paul tells everyone to eat something, as their time at sea is nearly over, so everyone eats and then apparently they throw the leftover food off the ship to lighten it further. The next day, they see land which they don't recognize, but they pull up the anchors and hoist the sail to run the ship aground. The front part of the ship sticks to the shore, but the rear part is destroyed by the storm. The soldiers, worried about the prisoners escaping, suggest that they kill them all, but Julius talks them out of it. Everyone finds their way to land.