Bermuda Triangle

article of 17 September 1950 Although the nearby Sargasso Sea already had a reputation as a mysterious region where ships may become lost, the earliest suggestion of unusual disappearances in the Bermuda area appeared in an article written by Edward Van Winkle Jones of the Miami Herald that was distributed by the Associated Press and appeared in various American newspapers on 17 September 1950. Two years later, Fate magazine published "Sea Mystery at Our Back Door": a short article, by George X. Sand, that was the first to lay out the now-familiar triangular area where the losses took place. Flight 19 was covered again in the April 1962 issue of The American Legion Magazine. In February 1964, Vincent Gaddis wrote an article called "The Deadly Bermuda Triangle" in Argosy saying Flight 19 and other disappearances were part of a pattern of strange events in the region, dating back to at least 1840. The next year, Gaddis expanded this article into a book, Invisible Horizons. Other writers elaborated on Gaddis' ideas, including John Wallace Spencer (Limbo of the Lost, 1969, repr. 1973); Charles Berlitz (The Bermuda Triangle, 1974); and Richard Winer (''The Devil's Triangle'', 1974). Various of these authors incorporated supernatural elements. == Triangle area ==

Sand's article in Fate described the area as "a watery triangle bounded roughly by Florida, Bermuda and Puerto Rico". Some writers gave different boundaries and vertices to the triangle, with the total area varying from , Consequently, the determination of which accidents occurred inside the triangle depends on which writer reported them. == Criticism of the concept ==

Larry Kusche Larry Kusche, author of The Bermuda Triangle Mystery: Solved (1975), argued that many claims of Gaddis and subsequent writers were 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 in fact 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: • 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 prone to tropical cyclones, the number of disappearances that did occur were, for the most part, not disproportionate, unlikely, or mysterious. • Berlitz and other writers often failed to mention such storms and sometimes even represented the disappearance as having happened in calm conditions when meteorological records clearly contradict this. • 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 alleged disappearances were, in reality, not mysterious. Berlitz found that one plane believed to have disappeared in 1937 had, in fact, crashed off Daytona Beach, Florida, in front of hundreds of witnesses. • 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. was being produced by John Simmons of Geofilms for the Equinox series, the marine insurance market Lloyd's of London was asked if an unusually large number of ships had sunk in the Bermuda Triangle area. Lloyd's determined that large numbers of ships had not sunk there. 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. and Barry Singer, 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. In a 2013 study, the World Wide Fund for Nature identified the world's 10 most dangerous waters for shipping, but the Bermuda Triangle was not among them. Benjamin Radford, an author and scientific paranormal investigator, noted in an interview on the Bermuda Triangle that it could be very difficult to locate an aircraft lost at sea due to the vast search area, and although the disappearance might be mysterious, that did not make it paranormal or unexplainable. Radford further noted the importance of double-checking information as the mystery surrounding the Bermuda Triangle had been created by people who had neglected to do so. NOAA attributes most Bermuda Triangle disappearances to environmental factors such as hurricanes, sudden weather shifts from the Gulf Stream, and hazardous shallow waters. The U.S. Navy dismisses supernatural claims, emphasizing natural causes and human error. Additionally, the U.S. Board on Geographic Names does not list the Bermuda Triangle as an official location, given the lack of evidence distinguishing it from other ocean regions. In the 2010s and 2020s, scientists and researchers have reiterated that the Bermuda Triangle does not exhibit higher rates of disappearances than other heavily traveled ocean regions. Australian scientist Karl Kruszelnicki told The Independent in 2017 that the "mystery" can be explained by human error, unpredictable weather, and the sheer volume of traffic passing through the area. According to Kruszelnicki, "On a percentage basis, the number of accidents in the Bermuda Triangle is the same as anywhere else in the world." == Hypothetical explanation attempts ==

Those accepting the Bermuda Triangle as a real phenomenon have suggested a number of explanations. Paranormal 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 city or state 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, but the Bimini Road is of natural origin. Some hypothesize that a parallel universe exists in the Bermuda Triangle region, causing a time/space warp that sucks the objects around it into a parallel universe. Others attribute the events to UFOs. Charles Berlitz, author of various books on anomalous phenomena, lists several theories attributing the losses in the Triangle to anomalous or unexplained forces. such anomalies have not been found. Compasses have natural magnetic variations in relation to the magnetic poles, a fact navigators have known for centuries. Only for a small number of places are magnetic (compass) north and geographic (true) north exactly the samein the United States, for example, , magnetic north and true north will appear to be the same only in those places located along a line running from Wisconsin to the Gulf of Mexico. Members of the public who are unaware of this, however, may think there is something mysterious about a compass "changing" across an area as large as the Triangle, which it naturally will. It has a maximum surface velocity of about . 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. Human stubbornness may have caused businessman Harvey Conover to lose his sailing yacht, Revonoc, as he sailed into the teeth of a storm south of Florida on 1 January 1958. Violent weather Hurricanes are powerful storms which form in tropical waters and have cost thousands of lives 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 caused a number of incidents related to the Triangle. Many Atlantic hurricanes pass through the Triangle as they recurve off the Eastern Seaboard, and, before the advent of weather satellites, ships often had little to no warning of a hurricane's approach. A powerful downdraft of cold air was suspected to be a cause in the sinking of Pride of Baltimore on 14 May 1986. The crew of the sunken vessel noted the wind suddenly shifted and increased velocity from to . A National Hurricane Center satellite specialist, James Lushine, stated "during very unstable weather conditions the downburst of cold air from aloft can hit the surface like a bomb, exploding outward like a giant squall line of wind and water." Methane hydrates An explanation for some of the disappearances has focused on the presence of large fields of methane hydrates (a form of natural gas) on the continental shelves. Laboratory experiments carried out in Australia have proven that bubbles can, indeed, sink a scale model ship by decreasing the density of the water, and any wreckage would be deposited on the ocean floor or 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 coast of the southeastern United States. However, according to the USGS, no large releases of gas hydrates are believed to have occurred in the Bermuda Triangle for the past 15,000 years. ==Notable incidents==

HMS Atalanta '', 1880 The sail training ship HMS Atalanta (originally named HMS Juno) disappeared with her entire crew after setting sail from the Royal Naval Dockyard, Bermuda for Falmouth, England on 31 January 1880. It was presumed that she sank in a powerful storm which crossed her route a couple of weeks after she sailed, and that her crew being composed primarily of inexperienced trainees may have been a contributing factor. The search for evidence of her fate attracted worldwide attention at the time (connection is also often made to the 1878 loss of the training ship HMS Eurydice, which foundered after departing the Royal Naval Dockyard in Bermuda for Portsmouth on 6 March), and she was alleged decades later to have been a victim of the mysterious triangle, an allegation resoundingly refuted by the research of author David Francis Raine in 1997. 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 the collier Cyclops, carrying a full load of manganese ore and with one engine out of action, went missing without a trace with a crew of 306 sometime after 4 March 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. In addition, two of Cyclopss sister ships, and , were subsequently lost in the North Atlantic during World War II. Both ships were transporting heavy loads of metallic ore similar to that which was loaded on Cyclops during her fatal voyage. In all three cases structural failure due to overloading with a much denser cargo than designed is considered the most likely cause of sinking. Carroll A. Deering Carroll A. Deering, as seen from the Cape Lookout lightvessel on 29 January 1921, two days before she was found deserted in North Carolina (US Coast Guard) Carroll A. Deering, a five-masted schooner built in 1919, was found hard aground and abandoned at Diamond Shoals, near Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, on 31 January 1921. FBI investigation into the Deering scrutinized, then ruled out, multiple theories as to why and how the ship was abandoned, including piracy, domestic Communist sabotage and the involvement of rum-runners. Flight 19 Flight 19 was a training flight of five TBM Avenger torpedo bombers that disappeared on 5 December 1945, while over the Atlantic. The squadron's flight plan was scheduled to take them due east from Fort Lauderdale for , north for , and then back over a final leg to complete the exercise. The flight never returned to base. The disappearance was attributed by Navy investigators to navigational error leading to the aircraft running out of fuel. One of the search and rescue aircraft deployed to look for them, a PBM Mariner with a 13-man crew, also disappeared. A tanker off the coast of Florida reported seeing an explosion and observing a widespread oil slick when fruitlessly searching for survivors. The weather was becoming stormy by the end of the incident. According to contemporaneous sources, the Mariner had a history of explosions due to vapor leaks when heavily loaded with fuel, as it might have been for a potentially long search-and-rescue operation. Star Tiger and Star Ariel G-AHNP Star Tiger disappeared on 30 January 1948, on a flight from the Azores to Bermuda; G-AGRE Star Ariel disappeared on 17 January 1949, on a flight from Bermuda to Kingston, Jamaica. Both were Avro Tudor IV passenger aircraft operated by British South American Airways. 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. Connemara IV A pleasure yacht was found adrift in the Atlantic south of Bermuda on 26 September 1955; it is usually stated in the stories (Berlitz, Winer) KC-135 Stratotankers On 28 August 1963, a pair of US Air Force KC-135 Stratotanker aircraft collided and crashed into the Atlantic west of Bermuda. Some writers say that while the two aircraft did collide, there were two distinct crash sites, separated by over of water. However, Kusche's research showed that the unclassified version of the Air Force investigation report revealed 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. ==See also==