Acts 28:11

The voyage from Malta and the arrival in Rome

11. And after three months The proper season for sailing having again come round, now that the winter was over.

we departed [R. V.set sail]. The verb is the same as in the preceding verse.

in a ship of Alexandria Another vessel employed in the same trade probably as that in which (Acts 28:6) they had embarked at Myra, and suffered so many perils.

which had wintered in the isle Having got so far on the voyage out before the stormy weather came on. As the harbour was then where it now is, the ship had wintered in what is now Valetta.

whose sign was Castor and Pollux [R. V.the Twin Brothers]. The Greek is Dioscuri, the name given to Jupiter's two sons born of Leda, who, when they were translated to the sky, became a constellation of special favour towards sailors. Horace speaks of them as "lucida sidera" (Od. i. 3. 2), where he describes their beneficent influence on the ocean. By "sign" is meant what we now call "figure-head," only that the ancient ships had such signs both at stem and stern, and often the figure was that of some divinity.

If for no other reason than the description of the vessel in which the further journey was performed we cannot accept the theory that the wreck took place in the Adriatic sea. It would be hard to conceive of a vessel from Alexandria, which had stopped on its voyage to Italy to avoid the storms of winter, being found so far out of its course as Meleda in the Adriatic.