Voyage to Italy

[Acts 27] The "we" here reintroduces the historian as one of the company. Not that he had left the missionary from the time when he last included himself (21:18), but the missionary was parted from him by his arrest and imprisonment, until now, when they met in the ship.
The other prisoners were State prisoners going to be tried at Rome; of which several instances are on record.
Julius, who treats the missionary throughout with such marked courtesy (27:3, 43; 28:16), that it has been thought he was present when Paul made his defense before Agrippa (25:23), and was impressed with his lofty bearing.
A centurion of Augustus' band was the Augustan legion, an honorary title given to more than one legion of the Roman army, implying, perhaps, that they acted as a bodyguard to the emperor or procurator, as occasion required.
Adramyttium was a port on the northeast coast of the Ægean Sea. Doubtless the centurion expected to find another ship, bound for Italy, at some of the ports of Asia Minor, without having to go with this ship all the way to Adramyttium; and in this he was not disappointed.
Asia was a coasting vessel, which was to touch at the ports of proconsular Asia.
One Aristarchus, a Macedonian of Thessalonica, being with us or rather, "Aristarchus the Macedonian.” The word "one" should not have been introduced here by our translators, as if this name had not occurred before; for we find him seized by the Ephesian mob as a "man of Macedonia and Paul's companion in travel" (19:29) and as a "Thessalonian" accompanying the apostle Timothy from Ephesus on his voyage back to Palestine (20:4). Here both these places are mentioned in connection with his name. After this we find him at Rome with the apostle Mark (Col 4:10; Philemon 24).
Aristarchus was a loyal co-worker of Paul, Aristarchus hailed from Thessalonica, but was in Ephesus and arrested with Gaius during the riot following Paul’s first appearance in that city. Aristarchus was Paul’s constant companion at the close of the missionary’s life, journeying with him from Troas to Jerusalem, and from Jerusalem to Rome, and sharing Paul’s imprisonment in Rome. According to tradition Aristarchus, too, died a martyr’s death in Rome during Nero’s persecution
As Egypt was the granary of Italy, and this vessel was laden with wheat (verse 35), they did need not wonder it was large enough to carry two hundred seventy-six souls, passengers and crew together (verse 37). Besides, the Egyptian merchantmen, among the largest in the Mediterranean, were equal to the largest merchantmen in our day. It may seem strange that on their passage from Alexandria to Italy they should be found at a Lycian port. But even still it is not unusual to stand to the north towards Asia Minor, for the sake of the current.
Since leaving Cæsarea. But for unforeseen delays they might have reached the Italian coast before the stormy season, that of the day of atonement, answering to the end of September and beginning of October, about which time the navigation is pronounced unsafe by writers of authority. Since all hope of completing the voyage during that season was abandoned, the question next was, whether they should winter at Fair Havens, or move to Port Phenice, a harbor about forty miles to the westward. Paul assisted at the consultation and strongly urged them to winter where they were.
A typhon or tornado wind, causing a whirling of the clouds, called Euroclydon, or east-northeast, caught the ship! They had to hoist up and secure the boat that had became independently of the gale, raging at the time, and had been towed between twenty and thirty miles after the gale sprang up, and could scarcely fail to be filled with water. Undergirding the ship was, passing four or five turns of a cable-laid rope round the hull or frame of the ship, to enable her to resist the violence of the seas, an operation rarely resorted to in modern seamanship.
Fearing lest they should fall into the quicksands meant "be cast ashore" or "stranded upon the Syrtis," the Syrtis Major, a gulf on the African coast, southwest of Crete, the dread of mariners, owing to its dangerous shoals. They struck lowered the gear which was
lowering of the heavy main yard with the sail attached to it.
On the third day they had to tackling of the ship, whatever they could do without that carried weight. This further effort to lighten the ship seems to show that it was now in a leaking condition, as will presently appear more evident.
Most of the next fourteen days this continued thickness of the atmosphere prevented their making the necessary observations of the heavenly bodies by day or by night; so that they could not tell where they were. And all hope that they should be saved was taken away. Their exertions to subdue the leak had been unavailing; they could not tell which way to make for the nearest land, in order to run their ship ashore, the only resource for a sinking ship: but unless they did make the land, they must founder at sea. Their apprehensions, therefore, were not so much caused by the fury of the tempest, as by the state of the ship. From the inferiority of ancient to modern naval architecture, leaks were sprung much more easily, and the means of repairing them were fewer than now. Hence the far greater number of shipwrecks from this cause! The hardships which the crew endured during a gale of such continuance, and their exhaustion from laboring at the pumps and hunger, may be imagined, but are not described.
While the crew were toiling at the pumps, Paul was wrestling in prayer, not for himself only and the cause in which he was going a prisoner to Rome, but with true generosity of spirit of soul for all his shipmates; and G-d heard him, "giving him" (remarkable expression!) all that sailed with him. "When the cheerless day came he gathered the sailors (and passengers) around him on the deck of the laboring vessel, and raising his voice above the storm”, reported the divine communication he had received; adding with a noble simplicity, "for I believe G-d that it shall be even as it was told me," and encouraging all on board to "be of good cheer" in the same confidence. What a contrast to this is the speech of Cæsar in similar circumstances to his pilot, bidding him keep up his spirit because he carried Cæsar and Cæsar's fortune! The Roman general knew no better name for the Divine Providence, by which he had been so often preserved, than Cæsar's fortune. From the explicit particulars--that the ship would be lost, but not one that sailed in it, and that they "must be cast on a certain island"--one would conclude a visional representation of a total wreck, a mass of human beings struggling with the angry elements, and one and all of those whose figures and countenances had daily met his eye on deck, standing on some unknown island shore. From what follows, it would seem that Paul from this time was regarded with deference akin to awe.
They cast four anchors out of the stern, the ordinary way was to cast the anchor, as now, from the bow: but ancient ships, built with both ends alike, were fitted with hawseholes in the stern, so that in case of need they could anchor either way. And when the fear was, as here, that they might fall on the rocks to leeward, and the intention was to run the ship ashore as soon as daylight enabled them to fix upon a safe spot, the very best thing they could do was to anchor by the stern. In stormy weather two anchors were used, and we have instances of four being employed.
The ship might go down at her anchors, or the coast to leeward might be iron-bound, affording no beach on which they could land with safety. Hence their anxious longing for day, and the ungenerous but natural attempt, not peculiar to ancient times, of the seamen to save their own lives by taking to the boat.
While the graphic minuteness of this narrative of the shipwreck puts it beyond doubt that the narrator was himself on board, the great number of nautical phrases, which all critics have noted, along with the unprofessional air which the whole narrative wears, agrees singularly with all we know and have reason to believe of "the beloved physician".