Experts claim they have found a biblical shipwreck as they discovered what they believe is the ship’s anchor.
The Biblical book Acts claims St Paul’s 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 on their way to Rome.
St Paul was heading to the centre of the Roman Empire to issue an appeal to Caeser when the ship ran aground in a storm and was smashed to pieces by the waves.
Holy lore recounts that the sailors desperate the survive the choppy waters cut away four of ships anchors and left them at sea.
Biblical explorers BASE Institute have claimed that they identified one of the anchors, and thus the real location of St Paul’s shipwreck.
BASE founder and Bible scholar Bob Cornuke travelled to Malta where he claims that he discovered the one surviving anchor.
He said the surviving anchor verifiably dates to the first century, and the location matches the description in Acts.
Cornuke claims that St Thomas’s Bay on the southeastern shore of Malta is the most likely location of St Paul’s shipwreck.
And the anchor BASE claims on their website is the icing on the cake for the discovery, alleging that the four anchors were discovered by four divers in 60s.
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Cornuke writes for BASE that only one of the anchors has survived, with the divers not knowing what they had discovered.
Two were melted down to become diving weight belts, the third was lost, and the fourth is owned by the widow of one of the divers.
He claims studies were carried out by the University of Malta which verified it is of 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 about St Thomas’s bay match up with the story of St Paul.
Geography of the area matches up with descriptions of a sandy beach.
It also has a large projecting reef which matches the Biblical wording of where “two seas meet”.
Depth of the water also matches with the actor recorded in Acts, and along a coastline which would have been used by ancient ships.
Acts 27:28 says the water was 90ft deep, which Cornuke claims exactly matches where the anchors were found.
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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.
“But the evidence for the anchors of Paul’s shipwreck is virtually overwhelming.”
Malta has a long tradition linked to St Paul, and it has long be theorised that the location the apostles shipwreck was St Paul’s Bay.
Many studies have been carried out over the years, and searches for evidence of the ship.
And another find was a one ton anchor sunk off Salina Bay in north east Malta.
It had the markings reading ISIS and SARAPIS, names of Egyptian gods, suggesting it may have come from the Middle East.
After his shipwreck, he eventually managed to get Rome but remained under house arrest as he faced trial.
He is believed to have died sometime between AD64 and AD68.
Some accounts claim he was behaved in Rome by the orders of Emperor Nero.
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