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Part four

The Bermuda Triangle

The Triangle

Bizarre and sinister things have happened in the Bermuda Triangle for hundreds of years. Planes have mysteriously disappeared without any reason. Ships have been found without their crew, and no one has been able to explain why.

The term ‘Bermuda Triangle’ was used for the first time by the American writer Vincent Gaddis in 1964. It describes the area that forms an almost perfect triangle between Bermuda, the south coast of Florida and Puerto Rico. Before 1964 the area was called the Devil’s Triangle, the Triangle of Death and the Graveyard of the Atlantic because of all the mysterious disappearances there.

Christopher Columbus was the first navigator to report strange happenings in the area of the Bermuda Triangle. In 1492, during his voyage to the New World, Columbus wrote in his journal that his compass stopped working in the area that we now call the Bermuda Triangle. He also wrote that he and his crew saw strange red lights in the sky, which they thought were the lights of a meteor.

Disappearing Ships

In the centuries that followed Columbus’s voyage, British and Spanish sailing ships, pirate ships and other vessels have disappeared in this area of the Atlantic Ocean. But why?

In March 1918, the Cyclop, a US Navy ship, disappeared while sailing from Barbados to Norfolk, Virginia, with 309 people on board. Neither the ship nor the crew were ever found.

The sailing ship Deering was found in perfect condition but without its crew near Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, on 30 January 1921. The Deering had passed through the Bermuda Triangle and its crew probably disappeared there.

In 1940 the yacht Gloria Colite was found abandoned in the Bermuda Triangle. The yacht was in perfect condition, but the crew had disappeared. The Rubicon, a Cuban ship carrying a large cargo, became another ghost ship in 1944. A small dog was the only living thing on the ship when it was found on Florida’s east coast! In 1963 the Marine Sulphur Queen, a large ship carrying sulphur from Beaumont, Texas, to Norfolk, Virginia, simply vanished.

Many other bizarre and unexplained disappearances like these have occurred over the years.

Lost Planes

On 5 December 1945 something happened that caused great interest all over the world. A group of five US Navy planes, called Flight 19, took off from Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The weather was perfect, and for the first two hours everything went well. Then the Naval Air Station at Fort Lauderdale began receiving strange radio messages from the pilots.

‘Everything is wrong… and strange. Both of the compasses have stopped working! We can’t be sure of our direction!’ said Lieutenant Charles C. Taylor, the leader of the flight.

The instruments on the planes were not working and the planes were lost. The pilots were not able to communicate. At 4 p.m. Lieutenant Taylor gave his last command to another pilot, and then all communication with Flight 19 ended. What had happened to the five planes and their pilots? The Naval Air Station sent out search planes to look for them.

The search planes flew over the area for days without finding anything. Then one of the search planes disappeared too. No one has ever found the five planes or the search plane, and there has never been an explanation for this tragedy.

There were rumours that aliens kidnapped the pilots. Some experts said that the irregular magnetic field in the Bermuda Triangle stopped the planes instruments from working. Others said that bad weather conditions caused the planes to crash into the ocean. The Atlantic is very deep in this area, and perhaps this is why the planes were never found. But not everyone agrees.

After the tragedy of Flight 19, the world started asking questions. People were suddenly interested in finding out more about this mysterious area. Newspapers and magazine articles started appearing. Vincent Gaddis wrote a book, Invisible Horizons: True Mysteries of the Sea, in which he dedicated a long chapter to the mysterious triangle. Many more books have been written on the subject, but there is no logical explanation to the mystery.

On 11 June 1986, Martin Caidin, an experienced pilot, was flying above the Bermuda Triangle in good weather. Suddenly, the sky around his plane became very cloudy. Then the colour of the sky changed to such a bright yellow that he could not see. The equipment on his plane stopped working and above him there was a hole, through which he could see blue sky. Below his plane he could see another hole and then the ocean. Caidin flew his plane for four hours in these strange conditions. Finally, the sky turned blue again and Caidin’s equipment started working. He turned around and looked - but all he could see was clear blue sky.

In the twentieth century more than 140 ships and planes with more than 1,000 people on board vanished. No one has ever seen or heard from them again.

A Mystery Explained?

The mystery of the Bermuda Triangle remains. Some say that it is where aliens enter the earth’s atmosphere and kidnap humans. Other believe that the legendary lost city of Atlantis pulls ships and planes down into the Atlantic Ocean. Still others say that the weather in the triangle is very unusual. Another theory says that the area is influenced by a strong magnetic field which affects navigation instruments.

Scientists have tried to explain some of the mysteries of the Bermuda Triangle. They say that big gas bubbles can come out of the ocean and cause serious problems for ships and planes. However, this does not explain why ships and yachts have been found in perfect condition, but without their crews. What happened to the sailors? Did they abandon their ships? Were they taken away, and, if so, by whom?

Lawrence Kusche, a research librarian at Arizona State University, spent many years examining the reported cases. He concluded that there was a logical explanation for most of the disappearances: bad weather conditions, poor equipment or human error. But not everyone agrees with Kusche.

Why haven’t bodies, or pieces of the planes and ships ever been found? Why does the sky change colour? Why do navigation instruments stop working? Who has the right answer? No one knows.