Biblical explorers of the Bible Archaeology, Search & Exploration (BASE) Institute, dedicated to the quest for archaeological evidence to help validate that the Bible is true, claim to have identified one of the anchors, and thus the real location of St Paul’s shipwreck, described in the Acts of the Apostles.
BASE founder and Bible scholar Bob Cornuke travelled to Malta where he claims to have unearthed the one surviving anchor that verifiably dates to the first century, with the location matching the description in Acts.
Cornuke claims that St Thomas’s Bay on the southeastern shore of Malta is the most likely location of the shipwreck.
BASE claims on its website that four anchors were discovered by divers in the 1960s, but only one survived, with the divers not knowing what they had discovered.
Two were melted down for diving weight belts, a third was lost, and the fourth is owned by the widow of one of the divers.
Cornuke claims studies were carried out by the University of Malta to verify its Roman origin.
“That one anchor may well be the only artefact mentioned in the New Testament that has been recovered and preserved in our era–nearly two thousand years after the fact,” Cornuke said.
BASE also claims other factors match up with the story of St Paul’s shipwreck, such as the geography of the area resembling the Holy lore descriptions of a sandy beach, and depth of the water : Acts 27:28 says the water was 90ft deep.
Cornuke added:
“All of these factors, taken together, argue convincingly not only that today’s St. Thomas’ Bay is the correct site of Paul’s shipwreck.
“[It also allows] that the four anchors recently retrieved from those waters were the very anchors mentioned in Acts.”
“As with any historical claim, the best we can do is examine the evidence in terms of probability,” he wrote.
Malta has a long tradition linked to St Paul, and speculation has long been rife that the location of the apostles’ shipwreck was St Paul’s Bay.
The Biblical book The Acts of the Apostles claims St Paul's holy boat was shipwrecked off the coast of Malta.
It is said that St Paul was travelling with Jesus Christ’s apostle Luke as they were headed to Rome to issue an appeal to Caesar when the ship ran aground in a storm and was smashed to pieces by the waves.
According to the Bible the sailors cut away four ships anchors and left them at sea in their struggle to survive.
Many studies have been carried out over the years to seek substantive proof of the Biblical shipwreck off Malta.
St Paul is one of the central figures in the early spread of Christianity.
After his shipwreck, it is believed he eventually managed to get to Rome, but remained under house arrest as he faced trial.
He is believed to have died sometime between AD64 and AD68, with some accounts claiming he was beheaded in Rome on the orders of Emperor Nero.