What an evangelist! Despite his reluctance...............
His shipmates were Phoenicians and headed to Tarshish (not Paul’s Tarsus), a Phoenician colony on the coast of Spain.
Phoenicians were pagans, as were just about everybody else in the ancient world, but they were convinced that the God of Jonah was a true god. This would help explain why Christianity spread so fast among the pagan civilizations after the Fall of Rome.......................