Acts 27:19

Acts 27:19. We cast out with our own hands the tackling of the ship. This was ‘on the third day.' The danger was now more imminent, as is evident from two particulars. In the first place, the passengers themselves (St. Luke certainly among the rest, and probably St. Paul and Aristarchus) took part in lightening the ship. This seems to imply fatigue and exhaustion among the seamen, unless, indeed, the weight of what they threw overboard required many hands. The second proof of the growing peril is ‘that they now parted with some of the gear of the ship.' This certainly would not have been done without urgent necessity. We cannot tell precisely what part of the gear is meant. Mr. Smith thinks it was the main-yard, ‘an immense spar, probably as long as the ship, and which would require the united efforts of passengers and crew to launch overboard,' adding ‘that the relief which a ship would experience by this would be of the same kind as in a modern ship, when the guns are thrown overboard.' But would sailors, in danger of foundering, willingly lose sight of such a spar as this, which would be capable of supporting thirty or forty men in the water?