St. Paul's Bay

By means of boards and broken planks they all reached land safely, while the old ship which had borne them through the storm went to pieces before their eyes.

They had reached Malta, and the bay where they landed is known today as St. Paul's Bay.

The sight of the ship attracted the natives on the island, Phoenician and Greek settlers, subject now to Rome, and they treated the shipwrecked crew with unusual kindness.

For three months, until February opened the sea again to navigation, they stayed at Malta.

That and mass Muslim casualties led to mass demoralization in the Ottoman camp.

Embarrassed talk of lifting the siege had already begun when a Sicilian relief force finally arrived with some 10,000 soldiers at St. Paul's Bay, the place where the famed apostle was once shipwrecked.

There the final scene of this Armageddon played out as the fresh newcomers routed the retreating Ottomans.

The Muslims finally fled and Malta was liberated on September 11th, a day which for many years thereafter was celebrated all throughout Christendom until it was supplanted with something else in the year 2001.