What is the…
“mainsail” mentioned in the King James Bible?

Greek: ἀρτέμωνα —transliteration: artemōna or artemona —meaning: something hung up or fastened

The Greek word artemona appears only once in Scripture and the KJV translation is misleading.

The King James Version of the Acts of the Apostles states,

And when they had taken up the anchors, they committed themselves unto the sea, and loosed the rudder bands, and hoised up the mainsail [artemona] to the wind, and made toward shore. —Acts 27:40 KJV

The much more recent Legacy Standard Bible translation:

And casting off the anchors, they left them in the sea while at the same time they were loosening the ropes of the rudders. And hoisting the foresail to the wind, they were heading for the beach. —Acts 27:40 LSB

Most modern translations say “foresail,” and that fits both the word’s ancient sense and the maneuver. It was not the great square mainsail amidships. That gear had already been lowered when the storm hit (Acts 27:17), and a full mainsail would have been too much canvas in a gale and the wrong sail for a short run onto a beach. The artemōn was a smaller sail set forward, on or near the bow—something like a foresail or spritsail.

Later Mediterranean names (artimone, voile d’artimon) shifted toward a stern sail, which is why older English versions guessed “mainsail,” but a stern sail would have pushed the bow off the beach. Syriac and Arabic versions call it the little sail, and medieval descriptions of the related artimonium treat it as a short bow sail that could be raised quickly when a ship was in extreme danger. Its job was steerage and a modest push, not speed.

Where was the sail located?

Forward, at the prow. A Roman grain ship normally carried a large main square sail and a smaller foresail ahead of it. With the main sail down, the foresail was what they still had that could both catch wind and keep the bow from falling off while the steering oars (rudders) worked.

What were they trying to do?

After two weeks of storm, the desperate sailors saw land at daybreak, but they did not recognize what land it was. But they saw a bay with a beach and decided to run the ship aground there if they could (Acts 27:39). Overnight they had anchored by the stern so they would not be driven onto rocks in the dark, and the two paddle-rudders—one on each quarter, the normal steering gear of a Greco-Roman ship—had been hauled up and lashed. Verse 40 is 3 actions done together:

• They cut the anchor cables and abandoned the anchors, so the ship could move.
• They untied the rudder bands so the steering oars dropped back into the water.
• They hoisted the foresail to the breeze and held course for the beach (kateichon eis ton aigialon).

The foresail gave them just enough way to steer. Their aim was a controlled beaching: drive the bow onto sand so the 276 people aboard could get off, rather than drift broadside onto rocks. It almost worked. In the next verse the bow struck a shoal where two seas met and stuck fast; the stern broke up under the waves. Thankfully, everyone still reached land, some swimming, some on planks and pieces of the ship (Acts 27:41–44).

The land turned out to be the island of Melita, aka Malta.

The wind that the sailors fought was the Euroclydon (a northeaster, aka Euraquilo).