Bermuda triangle, also known as the devil’s triangle or Hurricane Alley is one of the biggest mysteries of the world. Bermuda Triangle is a part of the Atlantic Ocean roughly bounded by Miami, Bermuda, and Puerto Rico making a triangle in shape and covers about 500,000 square miles of ocean off the southeastern tip of Florida.
The area around the Bermuda triangle has encountered numerous mysterious and enigmatic disappearances over the centuries. More than 150 planes, cargo ships, and smaller boats have met their end in the Bermuda triangle.
Where is the Bermuda triangle?
The name Bermuda Triangle was coined by writer Vincent Gaddis in the men’s pulp magazine “Argosy” in 1964. He wrote about the strange region in argosy magazine and even pointed out the triangle’s 3 points. Gaddis wrote about the paranormal activities or happenings within the Bermuda triangle and said that planes and ships had disappeared without any reason, because of this, his writing was criticized by the readers who didn’t believe the stories were supernatural.
Is the Bermuda triangle real?
Over the years there have been constant arguments about whether the triangle is real or not. However, there have been lots of famous disappearances in the Bermuda triangle and the majority of people who have gone through the triangle believe that’s there something, that doesn’t want them to leave the triangle.
1881 -Ellen Austin
The Ellen Austin on its journey in 1881 supposedly came across another ship that was sailing without a single person on board. Ellen Austin sent some of its crew members onto the other ship and attempted to sail with it to New York. According to the stories, the ship suddenly disappeared. But, later it re-appeared, but there were no crew members on board. Then it again disappeared without leaving any trace.
1918 – USS Cyclops
In March 1918, the USS Cyclops which is the largest navy ship at the time disappeared in Bermuda’s triangle. The ship was traveling from west indies to Maryland with 309 people on board. The ship was about 550 ft long and was carrying a full load of manganese ore and with one engine out of action.
The last message received from the ship was “Weather Fair, All Well”. During its 9 day course, the ship vanished and the ship never sent out an SOS distress call or any signal for help. All attempts to find the ship was unsuccessful.
1921 – Carroll A. Deering
A five-masted schooner built-in 1919, Carroll A. Deering was found wrecked at Diamond Shoals located off Cape Hatteras in North Carolina while it was traveling back home from Rio de Janerio to Maine. Rumors at the time indicated that the ship was a victim of piracy, possibly associated with the illegal rum-running trade.
Another ship named Hewitt which also disappeared roughly at the same time has said to be possibly involved in the Deering crew disappearance.
1945 – Flight 19
Another major loss in history happened on 5 December 1945 when the group of planes called Flight 19 which was a training flight of 5 TBM Avenger torpedo bombers took off from Fort Lauderdale, Florida to Naval air station get disappeared around Bermuda’s triangle. The credit of disappearance was given to the navy investigators for making a navigational error leading to the aircraft running out of fuel. A PBM Mariner aircraft with a 13-man crew was sent for the search and rescue mission of flight 19 was also get disappeared.
1948 – Star Tiger and Star Ariel
G-AHNP Star Tiger, while traveling from the Azores to Bermuda get disappeared on January 30, 1948, and on January 17, 1949, G-AGRE Star Ariel disappeared on a flight from Bermuda to Kingston, Jamaica. Both were Avro Tudor IV passenger aircraft operated by British South American Airways.
1948- a Douglas DC-3
December 28, 1948, flight Douglas DC-3 NC16002 disappeared while it was traveling from San Juan, Puerto Rico to Miami. It was only 50 miles south of Florida and about to land in Miami before it disappeared. There were 32 people on the flight, no trace of aircraft and people were ever found.
1955- Connemara IV
A yacht was found adrift in the Atlantic South of Bermuda. It is believed that the crew disappeared while the yacht survived being at sea during three hurricanes.
1963- KC-135 Stratotankers
On August 28, 1963, two US air force KC-135 aircraft collided and crashed in the Atlantic ocean. As with most of the Bermuda legends, some writers say that while the two aircraft did collide but there were two different crash sites, separated by a distance of 260 km of water.
The latest discovery may shed a different light on the internal enigma
2015- SS EL FARO
The most recent accident was also the most disastrous one that happened on 1 October 2015. A huge cargo ship named SS EL FARO went missing in the area of the Bermuda triangle. The ship was 790-ft carrying numerous containers, vehicles, and trailers from Jacksonville to Puerto Rico.
At the same time, a powerful tropical storm began 100 miles away and after some time it reached the SS EL FARO and started to encircle the ship and after that, no signal was received from the crew. Unexpectedly the hurricane calms down suddenly as it started. The search for that ship continued for weeks and SS EL FARO was finally spotted. It was positioned upright and in one piece at a depth of 15,000ft in the Atlantic. No trace of the crew members was found there.
What are the Explanations and Theories Behind the Mysteries of the Bermuda Triangle?
Many disappearances of planes or ships were reported and the mystery of the Bermuda triangle continued growing. Ever since researchers and scientists have come up with an array of theories to explain the mysterious disappearances in the Bermuda Triangle.
Rogue Waves
Researcher Dr. Simon Boxall from the University of Southampton believes the mystery can be explained by “rogue waves”. Rogue waves are extremely large and unexpected waves which can be very dangerous to large ships.
Dr. Boxall said in Channel 5 documentary – “The Bermuda Triangle Enigma” – “There are storms to the south and north, which come together”. “And if there are additional ones from Florida, it can be a potentially deadly formation of rogue waves.”
“They are steep, they are high – we’ve measured waves in excess of 30 meters.”
According to the report from Huffington Post, Rogues waves have been recorded before such as a “100-foot tsunami triggered by an earthquake and landslide in Alaska’s Lituya Bay in 1958”.
Compass Variations
According to the various sources of information, the compass needle in the Bermuda triangle point to true north rather than magnetic north. True north is the geographic north pole, and the magnetic north refers to shifting magnetism of the earth. When true north and magnetic north line up, it’s called agonic line. However, with the agonic line changing along with the magnetic field, it eventually moved out of the Bermuda Triangle area, Therefore, theories have been proven incorrect.
Methane Gas
A theory came up for some of the disappearances showing that there is a presence of large fields of methane hydrates on the seafloor. According to an experiment which was carried out in Australia have proven that bubbles can sink a scale model ship by decreasing the density of the water.
Publications by the USGS describe large stores of methane hydrates on the seafloor 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.
Gulf Stream
The Gulf Stream is a major surface current, primarily driven by thermohaline circulation that emerges in the Gulf of Mexico and then flows through the Straits of Florida into the North Atlantic region. It can cause rapid, sometimes extreme, changes in weather. In essence, it is a river within an ocean, and, like a river, it can and does carry floating objects. It has a maximum surface velocity of about 2 m/s (6.6 ft/s). A small plane making a water landing or a boat having engine trouble can be carried away from its reported position by the current.
City of Atlantis
Odd things can be considered while Bermuda triangle is in discussion, city of Atlantis might be the one, Charles Berlitz claimed that it was, in fact, a real continent off the Bahamas and was swallowed up by the Bermuda triangle, which leads to the origin of many conspiracy theories about how the triangle is not earth likely, some speculations were made that the temples in the city of Atlantis act as a source of energy to creatures below the water, as believers in this theory point to the discovery of rocks that were found underneath water which appeared to be man-made, although scientists have examined these structures and found them to be natural beach-rock formations.
Stormy weather
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), tropical storms and hurricanes are very common in this region of the Atlantic, which could be the reason for many of the reported disappearances that have happened over the last 100 years in the Bermuda Triangle.
Ships passing through the area in the past would have been more vulnerable to unforeseen and extreme changes in the weather than vessels today, which have access to more accurate forecasts and advanced systems, NOAA officials said in a statement.
U.S. Navy veteran Howard L. Rosenberg wrote about the Bermuda Triangle in an article for the Naval History and Heritage Command (NHHC) – “Brief yet violent thunderstorms called meso-meteorological storms, which can also spring up at sea without warning, could have also played a part, disrupting ship communications and stirring up enormous waves”.
The presence of many islands dotting the Caribbean Sea creates expanses of shallow water that could also spell trouble for large ships, the NOAA statement added. And if an accident were to occur, sharks and barracuda would make short work of bodies in the water, while the swiftly flowing Gulf Stream would quickly disperse any proof of wreckage from the site of a crash or explosion.
NOAA officials said in a statement: “The ocean has always been a mysterious place to humans, and when foul weather or poor navigation is involved, it can be a very deadly place. This is true all over the world. There is no evidence that mysterious disappearances occur with any greater frequency in the Bermuda Triangle than in any other large, well-traveled area of the ocean. ”
No mystery
Last year Australian scientist Karl Kruszelnicki claimed that a large number of mysterious disappearances cannot be explained by the theories of aliens or Atlantis, or even by the more probable theories involving rogue waves.
Instead, he suggests that the “mystery” is nothing more than a perfect combination of rough weather, human error, and a high concentration of ships in the area.
Karl Kruszelnicki told The Independent. “It is close to the Equator, near a wealthy part of the world – America – therefore you have a lot of traffic,”.
“According to Lloyd’s of London and the US Coastguard, the number that goes missing in the Bermuda Triangle is the same as anywhere in the world on a percentage basis.”
See What Sadhguru Says About Bermuda’s Triangle Mystery
Sadhguru answers a question about the mysterious Bermuda Triangle
The Bermuda triangle which was again another enigma of the previous generation, not anymore. These days nobody, no ships and planes crash in the Bermuda triangle. According to Sadhguru, the Bermuda triangle is a difficult place to navigate because it’s an old volcanic spot, there are spires underneath like small peaks, underneath the sea. One should know about it and navigate.
This keeps happening around the Italian coast also. Some places are not easier to navigate and negotiate, it takes a certain level of skills. Today these things have come down dramatically, nobody goes and disappears into the Bermuda triangle, because with modern gadgets and advanced technology, it becomes easier to navigate. There are sonar radars and radio altimeters and every possible technology which helps the ships through these days.
There was a documentary on the Bermuda triangle showing how difficult it is to navigate the Bosphorus. Bosphorus is the water body between two parts of Istanbul in turkey. Nowadays 8 radar stations guide the ships in the ocean. Earlier many ships used to crash into something or the other.
So people don’t crash anymore when captains of the ship were taking the ships to these kinds of situations with only their visual and their sensory capabilities, there was every chance for such incidents to happen.
Rosenberg about Bermuda Triangle
“The triangle area happens to be one of the most heavily traveled regions in the world, and the greater the number of ships or planes, the greater the odds that something will happen to some.”
Neil DeGrace Tyson about Bermuda Triangle
Renowned scientist, when asked about the uncertainty of triangle, replied with a logical approach rather than believing in some paranormal phenomena, his answer can be considered as what might be the real issue of the devil’s triangle.
“If you look at the amount of commerce that moves through the Bermuda triangle, It’s a region that connects Miami, Puerto Rico and some other place .. some part of Carrebian, if you look at traffic, air traffic and ship traffic and you look at rate at which you would lose a ship or a plane would crash in the world, it was not any different from any other place in the world, except it has more traffic so more ships and if you do the statistics right it, there is no mysterious physics going on in Bermuda triangle ” quoted by Tyson. ’
Final Thoughts:
Oceans are never considered to be friendly, nearly seventy percent of the earth is covered with water, similar episodes of disappearance happens all around the globe but no other place has gained much attention, Oceans are indeed busy places with all living creatures inside, hurricanes, bad weather, and waves.
A fundamental aspect of the Bermuda Triangle is such that it can be related to the vanishing of ships and planes yet each disappearance could not be more different. The amount of disappearances is largely dependent on factors such as weather, traffic, and presence of powerful currents in the ocean, while numerous incidents happened during bad weather, some when the sea is calm, some happened with giant ships some with smaller ones, some in day some at night while the cause is still unknown.
The mystery still remains unsolved but what’s more curious is how people are relating anything that is happening around the triangle to the Bermuda triangle, some still believe about the devil in the ocean but the real devil is in the details. Deering which traveled through the entire triangle but disappeared about two miles away from destination clearly seemed a case of foul play.
Some occurrences happened not in the triangle but far from it, so how big is it, what area it covers? or is it just a triangle or we should name is Bermuda circle which goes all around the globe and anything that happens in the water can be termed with Devil’s triangle. What can be concluded about the given situation? Is it really the ocean, foul plays, pirates? Or a simple way to understand is there is no such mysterious thing in the triangle it is the traffic, stormy weather, and waves which seems natural and not much different from other parts of the world where the similar incident happens and not much light is shed on them as they are not a part of the triangle.
Now that you’ve read about Bermuda Triangle read about the mysterious unsolved cases to date or read about the house built by spirits
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