Where was Paul shipwrecked?

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Accepted Answer

Paul's ship ran aground on Melita, which is usually identified with Malta, the island in the open sea south of Sicily; the exact bay is not known, and tradition places the wreck at St Paul's Bay on the north coast. Acts tells that the ship, sailing from Fair Havens in Crete, was caught by the wind Euroclydon and "driven up and down in Adria" for fourteen nights before it ran aground and broke up; all on board reached land, and "when they were escaped, then they knew that the island was called Melita." The islanders showed them kindness, a viper fastened on Paul's hand without harming him, and Publius, "the chief man of the island", lodged them. After three months they sailed on in an Alexandrian ship that had wintered there, by Syracuse and Rhegium to Puteoli. That Melita is Malta is the usual view: Adria then meant the open sea between Greece, Italy and Africa, not only today's Adriatic; a ship driven west from Crete by a north-easterly gale would reach Malta in about two weeks, as James Smith reckoned in 1848; an Alexandrian ship would winter there on its way to Italy; and inscriptions from Malta give the title "first" of the Melitans that Acts uses of Publius. Since the tenth century some have placed the wreck on Mljet, another Melite, in the Adriatic, and other islands have been proposed. The voyage is dated to the autumn of AD 59 and the winter that followed on the usual chronology.