The
Bermuda Triangle, also known as the
Devil's Triangle, is a region in the western part of the North
Atlantic Ocean where a number of
aircraft and
surface vessels allegedly disappeared mysteriously. Popular culture has attributed these disappearances to the
paranormal or activity by
extraterrestrial beings.
[1] Documented evidence indicates that a significant percentage of the incidents were inaccurately reported or embellished by later authors, and numerous official agencies have stated that the number and nature of disappearances in the region is similar to that in any other area of ocean.
The Triangle area
The area of the Triangle varies by author
The boundaries of the triangle cover the
Straits of Florida, the
Bahamas and the entire
Caribbean island area and the Atlantic east to the
Azores. The more familiar triangular boundary in most written works has as its points somewhere on the Atlantic coast of
Miami;
San Juan,
Puerto Rico; and the mid-Atlantic island of
Bermuda, with most of the accidents concentrated along the southern boundary around the Bahamas and the Florida Straits.
The area is one of the most heavily traveled shipping lanes in the world, with ships crossing through it daily for ports in the Americas,
Europe, and the Caribbean Islands. Cruise ships are also plentiful, and pleasure craft regularly go back and forth between Florida and the islands. It is also a heavily flown route for commercial and private aircraft heading towards Florida, the Caribbean, and
South America from points north.
History
Origins
The earliest allegation of unusual disappearances in the Bermuda area appeared in a September 16, 1950
Associated Press article by Edward Van Winkle Jones.
[2] Two years later,
Fate magazine published "Sea Mystery At Our Back Door",
[3] a short article by George X. Sand covering the loss of several planes and ships, including the loss of
Flight 19, a group of five
U.S. Navy TBM Avenger bombers on a training mission. Sand's article was the first to lay out the now-familiar triangular area where the losses took place. Flight 19 alone would be covered in the April 1962 issue of
American Legion Magazine.
[4] It was claimed that the flight leader had been heard saying "We are entering white water, nothing seems right. We don't know where we are, the water is green, no white." It was also claimed that officials at the Navy board of inquiry stated that the planes "flew off to Mars." Sand's article was the first to suggest a supernatural element to the Flight 19 incident. In the February 1964 issue of
Argosy,
Vincent Gaddis's article "The Deadly Bermuda Triangle" argued that Flight 19 and other disappearances were part of a pattern of strange events in the region.
[5] The next year, Gaddis expanded this article into a book,
Invisible Horizons.
[6]
Others would follow with their own works, elaborating on Gaddis's ideas: John Wallace Spencer (
Limbo of the Lost, 1969, repr. 1973);
[7] Charles Berlitz (
The Bermuda Triangle, 1974);
[8] Richard Winer (
The Devil's Triangle, 1974),
[9] and many others, all keeping to some of the same supernatural elements outlined by Eckert.
[10]
Larry Kusche
Lawrence David Kusche, a research librarian from
Arizona State University and author of
The Bermuda Triangle Mystery: Solved (1975)
[11] argued that many claims of Gaddis and subsequent writers were often exaggerated, dubious or unverifiable. Kusche's research revealed a number of inaccuracies and inconsistencies between Berlitz's accounts and statements from eyewitnesses, participants, and others involved in the initial incidents. Kusche noted cases where pertinent information went unreported, such as the disappearance of round-the-world yachtsman
Donald Crowhurst, which Berlitz had presented as a mystery, despite clear evidence to the contrary. Another example was the ore-carrier recounted by Berlitz as lost without trace three days out of an
Atlantic port when it had been lost three days out of a port with the same name in the
Pacific Ocean. Kusche also argued that a large percentage of the incidents that sparked allegations of the Triangle's mysterious influence actually occurred well outside it. Often his research was simple: he would review period newspapers of the dates of reported incidents and find reports on possibly relevant events like unusual weather, that were never mentioned in the disappearance stories.
Kusche concluded that:
- The number of ships and aircraft reported missing in the area was not significantly greater, proportionally speaking, than in any other part of the ocean.
- In an area frequented by tropical storms, the number of disappearances that did occur were, for the most part, neither disproportionate, unlikely, nor mysterious; furthermore, Berlitz and other writers would often fail to mention such storms.
- The numbers themselves had been exaggerated by sloppy research. A boat's disappearance, for example, would be reported, but its eventual (if belated) return to port may not have been.
- Some disappearances had, in fact, never happened. One plane crash was said to have taken place in 1937 off Daytona Beach, Florida, in front of hundreds of witnesses; a check of the local papers revealed nothing.
- The legend of the Bermuda Triangle is a manufactured mystery, perpetuated by writers who either purposely or unknowingly made use of misconceptions, faulty reasoning, and sensationalism.[11]
Further responses
When the UK Channel 4 television program "The Bermuda Triangle" (c. 1992) was being produced by John Simmons of Geofilms for the
Equinox series, the marine insurer
Lloyd's of London was asked if an unusually large number of ships had sunk in the Bermuda Triangle area. Lloyd's of London determined that large numbers of ships had not sunk there.
[12]
United States Coast Guard records confirm their conclusion. In fact, the number of supposed disappearances is relatively insignificant considering the number of ships and aircraft that pass through on a regular basis.
[11]
The Coast Guard is also officially skeptical of the Triangle, noting that they collect and publish, through their inquiries, much documentation contradicting many of the incidents written about by the Triangle authors. In one such incident involving the 1972 explosion and sinking of the tanker
SS V. A. Fogg in the Gulf of Mexico, the Coast Guard photographed the wreck and recovered several bodies,
[13] in contrast with one Triangle author's claim that all the bodies had vanished, with the exception of the captain, who was found sitting in his cabin at his desk, clutching a coffee cup.
[7]
The
NOVA/
Horizon episode
The Case of the Bermuda Triangle, aired on June 27, 1976, was highly critical, stating that "When we've gone back to the original sources or the people involved, the mystery evaporates. Science does not have to answer questions about the Triangle because those questions are not valid in the first place... Ships and planes behave in the Triangle the same way they behave everywhere else in the world."
[14]
David Kusche pointed out a common problem with many of the Bermuda Triangle stories and theories: "Say I claim that a parrot has been kidnapped to teach aliens human language and I challenge you to prove that is
not true. You can even use Einstein's Theory of Relativity if you like. There is simply no way to prove such a claim untrue. The burden of proof should be on the people who make these statements, to show where they got their information from, to see if their conclusions and interpretations are valid, and if they have left anything out."
[14]
Skeptical researchers, such as Ernest Taves
[15] and Barry Singer,
[16] have noted how mysteries and the paranormal are very popular and profitable. This has led to the production of vast amounts of material on topics such as the Bermuda Triangle. They were able to show that some of the pro-paranormal material is often misleading or inaccurate, but its producers continue to market it. Accordingly, they have claimed that the market is biased in favor of books, TV specials, and other media that support the Triangle mystery, and against well-researched material if it espouses a skeptical viewpoint.
Finally, if the Triangle is assumed to cross land, such as parts of Puerto Rico, the
Bahamas, or Bermuda itself, there is no evidence for the disappearance of any land-based vehicles or persons.
[citation needed] The city of
Freeport, located inside the Triangle, operates a major shipyard and an airport that handles 50,000 flights annually and is visited by over a million tourists a year.
[17]
Supernatural explanations
Triangle writers have used a number of supernatural concepts to explain the events. One explanation pins the blame on leftover technology from the mythical lost continent of
Atlantis. Sometimes connected to the Atlantis story is the submerged rock formation known as the
Bimini Road off the island of
Bimini in the Bahamas, which is in the Triangle by some definitions. Followers of the purported psychic
Edgar Cayce take his prediction that evidence of Atlantis would be found in 1968 as referring to the discovery of the Bimini Road. Believers describe the formation as a road, wall, or other structure, though geologists consider it to be of natural origin.
[18]
Other writers attribute the events to
UFOs.
[19] This idea was used by
Steven Spielberg for his
science fiction film Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which features the lost Flight 19 aircrews as alien abductees.
Charles Berlitz, author of various books on anomalous phenomena, lists several theories attributing the losses in the Triangle to anomalous or unexplained forces.
[8]
Natural explanations
Compass variations
Compass problems are one of the cited phrases in many Triangle incidents. While some have theorized that unusual local magnetic anomalies may exist in the area,
[20] such anomalies have not been shown to exist. Compasses have natural
magnetic variations in relation to the
magnetic poles, a fact which navigators have known for centuries.
Magnetic (compass) north and
geographic (true) north are only exactly the same for a small number of places - for example, as of 2000 in the United States only those places on a line running from
Wisconsin to the
Gulf of Mexico.
[21] But the public may not be as informed, and think there is something mysterious about a compass "changing" across an area as large as the Triangle, which it naturally will.
[11]
Deliberate acts of destruction
Deliberate acts of destruction can fall into two categories: acts of war, and acts of piracy. Records in enemy files have been checked for numerous losses. While many sinkings have been attributed to surface raiders or submarines during the
World Wars and documented in various command log books, many others suspected as falling in that category have not been proven. It is suspected that the loss of USS
Cyclops in 1918, as well as her sister ships
Proteus and
Nereus in
World War II, were attributed to submarines, but no such link has been found in the German records.
Piracy—the illegal capture of a craft on the high seas—continues to this day. While piracy for cargo theft is more common in the western Pacific and Indian oceans, drug smugglers do steal pleasure boats for smuggling operations, and may have been involved in crew and yacht disappearances in the Caribbean.
Piracy in the Caribbean was common from about 1560 to the 1760s, and famous pirates included Edward Teach (
Blackbeard) and
Jean Lafitte.
[citation needed]
False-color image of the Gulf Stream flowing north through the western Atlantic Ocean. (NASA)
Gulf Stream
The
Gulf Stream is an ocean current that originates in the
Gulf of Mexico and then flows through the
Straits of Florida into the North Atlantic. In essence, it is a river within an ocean, and, like a river, it can and does carry floating objects. It has a surface velocity of up to about 2.5 metres per second (5.6 mi/h).
[22] A small plane making a
water landing or a boat having engine trouble can be carried away from its reported position by the current.
Human error
One of the most cited explanations in official inquiries as to the loss of any aircraft or vessel is human error.
[23] Whether deliberate or accidental, humans have been known to make mistakes resulting in catastrophe, and losses within the Bermuda Triangle are no exception. For example, the Coast Guard cited a lack of proper training for the cleaning of volatile
benzene residue as a reason for the loss of the tanker SS
V.A. Fogg in 1972
[citation needed]. Human stubbornness may have caused businessman Harvey Conover to lose his sailing yacht, the
Revonoc, as he sailed into the teeth of a storm south of Florida on January 1, 1958.
[24]
Hurricanes
Hurricanes are powerful storms, which form in tropical waters and have historically cost thousands of lives lost and caused billions of dollars in damage. The sinking of
Francisco de Bobadilla's Spanish fleet in 1502 was the first recorded instance of a destructive hurricane. These storms have in the past caused a number of incidents related to the Triangle.
Methane hydrates
Worldwide distribution of confirmed or inferred offshore gas hydrate-bearing sediments, 1996.
Source:
USGS An explanation for some of the disappearances has focused on the presence of vast fields of
methane hydrates (a form of natural gas) on the
continental shelves.
[25] Laboratory experiments carried out in Australia have proven that bubbles can, indeed, sink a scale model ship by decreasing the density of the water;
[26] any wreckage consequently rising to the surface would be rapidly dispersed by the
Gulf Stream. It has been hypothesized that periodic methane
eruptions (sometimes called "
mud volcanoes") may produce regions of frothy water that are no longer capable of providing adequate
buoyancy for ships. If this were the case, such an area forming around a ship could cause it to sink very rapidly and without warning.
Publications by the
USGS describe large stores of undersea hydrates worldwide, including the
Blake Ridge area, off the southeastern
United States coast.
[27] However, according to another of their papers, no large releases of gas hydrates are believed to have occurred in the Bermuda Triangle for the past 15,000 years.
[12]
Rogue waves
In various oceans around the world,
rogue waves have caused ships to sink
[28] and oil platforms to topple.
[29] These waves, until 1995, were considered to be a mystery and/or a myth.
[30][31]
Notable incidents
Flight 19
US Navy TBF Grumman Avenger flight, similar to Flight 19. This photo had been used by various Triangle authors to illustrate Flight 19 itself. (US Navy)
Flight 19 was a training flight of
TBM Avenger bombers that went missing on December 5, 1945 while over the Atlantic. The squadron's flight path was scheduled to take them due east for 120 miles, north for 73 miles, and then back over a final 120-mile leg that would return them to the naval base, but they never returned. The impression is given
[citation needed] that the flight encountered unusual phenomena and anomalous compass readings, and that the flight took place on a calm day under the supervision of an experienced pilot, Lt. Charles Carroll Taylor. Adding to the intrigue is that the Navy's report of the accident ascribed it to "causes or reasons unknown."
[citation needed]
Adding to the mystery, a search and rescue
Mariner aircraft with a 13-man crew was dispatched to aid the missing squadron, but the Mariner itself was never heard from again. Later, there was a report from a tanker cruising off the coast of Florida of a visible explosion
[32] at about the time the Mariner would have been on patrol.
While the basic facts of this version of the story are essentially accurate, some important details are missing. The weather was becoming stormy by the end of the incident, and naval reports and written recordings of the conversations between Taylor and the other pilots of Flight 19 do not indicate magnetic problems.
[33]
Mary Celeste
The mysterious abandonment in 1872 of the 282-ton
brigantine Mary Celeste is often but inaccurately connected to the Triangle, the ship having been abandoned off the coast of
Portugal. The event is possibly confused with the loss of a ship with a similar name, the
Mari Celeste, a 207-ton
paddle steamer that hit a
reef and quickly sank off the coast of Bermuda on September 13, 1864.
[34][35] Kusche noted that many of the "facts" about this incident were actually about the
Marie Celeste, the fictional ship from
Arthur Conan Doyle's short story "
J. Habakuk Jephson's Statement" (based on the real
Mary Celeste incident, but fictionalised).
Ellen Austin
The
Ellen Austin supposedly came across a derelict ship, placed on board a prize crew, and attempted to sail with it to New York in 1881. According to the stories, the derelict disappeared; others elaborating further that the derelict reappeared minus the prize crew, then disappeared again with a second prize crew on board. A check from
Lloyd's of London records proved the existence of the
Meta, built in 1854 and that in 1880 the
Meta was renamed
Ellen Austin. There are no casualty listings for this vessel, or any vessel at that time, that would suggest a large number of missing men were placed on board a derelict that later disappeared.
[36]
USS Cyclops
The incident resulting in the single largest loss of life in the history of the US Navy not related to combat occurred when
USS Cyclops, under the command of
Lt Cdr G.W. Worley, went missing without a trace with a crew of 309 sometime after March 4, 1918, after departing the island of
Barbados. Although there is no strong evidence for any single theory, many independent theories exist, some blaming storms, some capsizing, and some suggesting that
wartime enemy activity was to blame for the loss.
[37][38]
Theodosia Burr Alston
Theodosia Burr Alston was the daughter of former
United States Vice President Aaron Burr. Her disappearance has been cited at least once in relation to the Triangle.
[39] She was a passenger on board the
Patriot, which sailed from
Charleston, South Carolina to
New York City on December 30, 1812, and was never heard from again. The planned route is well outside all but the most extended versions of the Bermuda Triangle. Both piracy and the
War of 1812 have been posited as explanations, as well as a theory placing her in Texas, well outside the Triangle.
Carroll A. Deering
A five-masted schooner built in 1919, the
Carroll A. Deering was found hard aground and abandoned at Diamond Shoals, near
Cape Hatteras,
North Carolina on January 31, 1921. Rumors and more at the time indicated the
Deering was a victim of piracy, possibly connected with the illegal rum-running trade during
Prohibition, and possibly involving another ship, S.S.
Hewitt, which disappeared at roughly the same time. Just hours later, an unknown steamer sailed near the lightship along the track of the
Deering, and ignored all signals from the lightship. It is speculated that the
Hewitt may have been this mystery ship, and possibly involved in the
Deering crew's disappearance.
[40]
Douglas DC-3
On December 28, 1948, a
Douglas DC-3 aircraft, number
NC16002, disappeared while on a flight from San Juan, Puerto Rico, to Miami. No trace of the aircraft or the 32 people onboard was ever found. From the documentation compiled by the Civil Aeronautics Board investigation, a possible key to the plane's disappearance was found, but barely touched upon by the Triangle writers: the plane's batteries were inspected and found to be low on charge, but ordered back into the plane without a recharge by the pilot while in San Juan. Whether or not this led to complete electrical failure will never be known. However, since piston-engined aircraft rely upon
magnetos to provide spark to their cylinders rather than a battery powered
ignition coil system, this theory is not strongly convincing.
[41]
Star Tiger and Star Ariel
G-AHNP Star Tiger disappeared on January 30, 1948 on a flight from the Azores to Bermuda;
G-AGRE Star Ariel disappeared on January 17, 1949, on a flight from Bermuda to
Kingston, Jamaica. Both were
Avro Tudor IV passenger aircraft operated by
British South American Airways.
[42] Both planes were operating at the very limits of their range and the slightest error or fault in the equipment could keep them from reaching the small island. One plane was not heard from long before it would have entered the Triangle.
[11]
KC-135 Stratotankers
On August 28, 1963 a pair of
US Air Force KC-135 Stratotanker aircraft collided and crashed into the Atlantic. The Triangle version (Winer, Berlitz, Gaddis
[5][8][9]) of this story specifies that they did collide and crash, but there were two distinct crash sites, separated by over 160 miles (260 km) of water. However, Kusche's research
[11] showed that the unclassified version of the Air Force investigation report stated that the debris field defining the second "crash site" was examined by a search and rescue ship, and found to be a mass of
seaweed and
driftwood tangled in an old
buoy.
SS Marine Sulphur Queen
SS Marine Sulphur Queen, a
T2 tanker converted from oil to
sulfur carrier, was last heard from on February 4, 1963 with a crew of 39 near the Florida Keys.
Marine Sulphur Queen was the first vessel mentioned in Vincent Gaddis' 1964
Argosy Magazine article,
[5] but he left it as having "sailed into the unknown", despite the Coast Guard report, which not only documented the ship's badly-maintained history, but declared that it was an unseaworthy vessel that should never have gone to sea.
[43][44]
Connemara IV
A pleasure yacht was found adrift in the Atlantic south of Bermuda on September 26, 1955; it is usually stated in the stories (Berlitz, Winer
[8][9]) that the crew vanished while the yacht survived being at sea during three hurricanes. The
1955 Atlantic hurricane season lists only one storm coming near Bermuda towards the end of August, hurricane "Edith"; of the others, "Flora" was too far to the east, and "Katie" arrived after the yacht was recovered. It was confirmed that the
Connemara IV was empty and in port when "Edith" may have caused the yacht to slip her moorings and drift out to sea.
[11]
Postingan
