Divers’ documentary shines spotlight on St Paul

St Paul’s Shipwreck, annually commemorated on February 10, is arguably the most powerful component of Malta’s cultural mythology.

An island that could be Malta being mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles is no small feat, and being identified as the site of the key incident in 60 AD – in which St Paul was left stranded on the island en route to Rome – is popularly considered to signal the blossoming of Christianity on the island.

Folk legends don’t get more powerful than this.

Many scholars have since disputed the simplistic – and too-neatly far-reaching – correlation between St Paul’s fateful shipwreck on the island and Malta adopting Christianity instantly and wholesale.

But there’s no doubt that the story continues to cast a spell on the Maltese popular imagination to this day, and it’s doubtful that its grip will loosen any time soon… no matter how many thorough and well-argued academic essays emerge from the hallowed halls of academe to demystify it.

Perhaps diver Mark Gatt is better placed than most to argue for the shipwreck’s tangible historical validity. He certainly has an impressive prop ready to hand to stake a claim in the ongoing discussion.

In April 2005, while out diving in the vicinity of Salina Bay, Gatt came across a startling discovery: an anchor inscribed with ISIS-SARAPIS: the names of ancient Egyptian deities, which not only point to a correspondingly ancient historical source, but which could, Gatt argues, also link to St Paul’s shipwreck to Malta – since Paul would have arrived on just such an Egyptian grain ship.

‘Moving towards the tail fin as though it is calling me, motioning me towards it, I am now no longer swimming in a horizontal position. I am magically upright drifting towards an anchor. My God, this is a Roman anchor! A lead anchor stock! Time stops as I try to capture the moment. I touch the anchor as though to make sure that it is really lead. “Of course it’s lead, stupid”, I think. If it were some other metal there would be the tell-tale brown rust residue surrounding the anchor. This is solid lead,’ Gatt writes in his book about the experience, ‘PAVLVS: The Shipwreck 60 AD’.

The finding also drew the attention of Pope Benedict, who inspected it upon his visit to Malta. News of the discovery reached the Pope through the German historian Michael Hesemann, who met with Gatt after his discovery was publicized in the media.

“When I published my book, Hesemann realised that the morning of my discovery was the exact same time that the newly elected Pope, His Holiness Benedict XVI was concelebrating his inaugural Mass. Hesemann took a picture of the anchor, framed it and went to meet His Holiness to inform him of this discovery and the date it was found. The Pontiff was reported by l’Osservatore Romano to have said, ‘This is a sign of Divine Providence’,” Gatt said.

Gatt then received another call from Hesemann a couple of years later, informing him that he should take the anchor out of the Maritime Museum, and take it up to the altar where Benedict would be celebrating Holy Mass. Gatt insisted that this would be logistically impossible unless the request came directly from the Vatican.

“I wasn’t sure what was happening behind the scenes, but three days before the Pope was to arrive to Malta, I got a call from Mgr Gwann Azzopardi informing me that the Maltese Curia had received the request from the Vatican. I am a volunteer with the Department of Civil Protection and I was already assigned rescue duties for the Papal visit. It was now all systems go to get the necessary permits and move the one-ton anchor from the Maritime Museum to near St Paul’s Church in Rabat,” Gatt said.

The operation went off without a hitch, and Gatt enthusiastically recounts that fateful evening on 17 April, 2010, when Pope Benedict chose to inspect the anchor personally in Rabat.

“As soon as His Holiness walked out of the Popemobile, ignoring everyone, he walked straight to the anchor and touched it. I was introduced to him and was amazed by his perfect spoken English and his interest in the discovery. At one point he asked me if the anchor was coming from an Egyptian grain ship – a German would say ‘corn’ ship, but he said ‘grain’ ship.

“He is intelligent enough not to ask if the anchor is from the ship Apostle Paul was on when shipwrecked on Malta – nobody can definitely prove any artefact pertaining to this ship. He by-passed this by asking if it is coming from an Egyptian grain ship as the Acts of the Apostles specify that Paulus was in fact on such a ship.

“I still get goosebumps each time I remember this part. I replied that the inscriptions on the anchor might suggest this, to which he grabbed my hand and said, ‘Yes, Isis.’ Now, where the Pope was standing he could not see or read the inscriptions. This proved that he was actually truly interested in this discovery, that he had read the reports, and that the request for him to see the anchor was in fact a personal request,” Gatt said.

Having already recounted the experiences of finding the historic anchor – now on display at the Maritime Museum in Birgu – in print, Gatt will now be detailing this journey in a documentary that shares a title with his book, put together with the help of director Jeannot Kuenzel and with the aid of the Malta Film Fund.

“I hope that the documentary will communicate my discovery. Not the anchor; any diver could have discovered that. I hope that it will communicate what I think is the mechanics as to why Apostle Paul’s ship came to Malta… the sea anchor.”

Gatt is a realist: he knows that the anchor hardly constitutes definitive evidence of St Paul’s sojourn to our island, he still believes that it’s worth exploring within this context.

The location of the finding is also key, as among the potential geographical candidates for the shipwreck, Gatt places himself firmly within the ‘Salini Bay’ camp.

“The quantity of large anchors and the many amphorae and bits of pottery found outside Salina Bay, all point to a very large ship not on its usual trade route. This would be equivalent to finding an oil super-tanker on the seabed off Malta when we do not have oil rigs or refineries. Tie this to the most important building we have in Malta associated to the shipwreck – San Pawl Milqi – Primus (governor) Publius’ estate in Burmarrad and the sea in Salina Bay in Roman times going in to where we now find the church in Burmarrad. Add to this the sandbank in the middle of Salina Bay and I firmly believe that the 60 A.D. shipwreck occurred in the middle of Salina Bay,” Gatt argues.