The Mysteries Of The Bermuda Triangle

The Mystery Of The Bermuda Triangle

Why is Bermuda Triangle so Famous?

The Bermuda Triangle is considered one of the most mysterious places on this planet owing to the reports of several planes and ships disappearing in this region.

It is located in the west part of the North Atlantic Ocean. The nearby places are regions of high naval traffic. They are frequented by the vessels that are heading towards America, Europe, and the Caribbean.

Both cruise ships and commercial ones operate in this region. It extends over an area of 440,000 miles of sea between Bermuda, Florida, and Puerto Rico.

The Bermuda Triangle is known as The Devil’s Triangle. In the year 1964, Vincent Gaddis published an article in Argosy magazine where he first used the name “Bermuda Triangle.”

It attracts many scientists and marine enthusiasts because of the various disappearances linked to it. Several ships and planes have been reported to have gone missing in this region taking with its thousands of people.

The stories of disappearances date back to the days of Columbus discovering the New World.

During his first voyage, he reported having seen a flame of fire falling into the sea in the triangle. However, it was not until the 20th century that these mysterious behaviors came to public attention.

People came to know of it when USS Cyclops, a US Navy cargo ship disappeared in the Bermuda Triangle. In recent times a small twin-engine plane vanished in this region in 2017 in May. The aircraft was a private MU-2B aircraft carrying four people and was flying at 24,000 feet when it suddenly vanished from the radar and radio contact with air traffic controllers in Miami.

However, later the plane wreckage was found. In October 2015 a cargo vessel sank in the Bermuda Triangle region when it got caught in a deadly hurricane.

People throughout the years have tried to explain the mysteries. Some of these explanations were rational while others not quite so. People have come up with some of the most bizarre theories possible.

Some say that there is some alien activity involved while others have suggested paranormal activities. The most plausible among the theories put forward by some of the more scientific minds indicate the presence of excess electromagnetic force caused by the earth’s natural magnet.

It is considered one of the twelve vile vortices on the earth. These are the areas on the planet where the earth’s magnetic field is the strongest.

This high pull causes the ships and aircraft to function improperly causing them to go in a direction that they did not intend to and thereby end up losing their way or result in a failed system. But the reality is no solid unanimously accepted theory provides a concrete explanation to the people regarding the incidents.

What causes further problems is the fact many of the reported incidents have been later discovered to be false or inaccurate.

Since there is no concrete explanation, there is no solution to the problem either and hence almost every year disappearances keep on happening. With each successive disappearance, the legend of the mysterious Devil’s Triangle becomes stronger and stronger.

This compels us to make a list of some of the unresolved mysteries of the Bermuda Triangle. Following are some of the same:

1) Mary Celeste

On 4th December 1872, a ship was found stranded in the seas. It was on its way from New York to Genoa, Italy and was being captained by Benjamin Briggs. The ship apart from his family of his wife and two-year-old daughter was carrying seven other crew members.

The ship also happened to be carrying a good quantity of alcohol. It was found adrift under partial sail in the Atlantic Ocean by a British vessel Dei Gratia. There was no one on the ghost ship, and the lifeboats were also missing. But the most perplexing thing was the fact that the boat was mostly intact along with the alcohol it was carrying.

Nine of the barrels were empty, but the rest were fine. The valuables belonging to the crew were also in place. This ruled out the possibility of a pirate attack.

The result of all this was the overflow of theories from the creative minds that ranged from criminal conspiracies to alien attacks. Some believe that it was probably attacked by some giant squid or perhaps it fell into an underwater earthquake or some similar natural disaster that pushed it into the Bermuda Triangle.

The shipwreck and its speculations created a fantastic tale. But when it came to coming up with concrete information as to why this uncompromised ship got abandoned by the most skilled sailors the most logical speculations fell short.

Also read: Top 12 Most Famous Sunken Ships

2) Ellen Austin

The sheer amount of variation in the reported sightings of the Ellen Austin after the incident is what is most astonishing about it. In 1881, the 210 feet long schooner was headed to New York from London. This is when it came across the remains of an abandoned ship near the Bermuda Triangle to the north of the Sargasso Sea. Everything seemed alright about this ship except that there was nobody on the ship.

Captain Baker was in charge of the Ellen Austin, and he wanted to make sure that it was no trap. So, he decided to wait for two days and observe the derelict. When nothing happened even after two days, he boarded the empty vessel.

Despite the well-packed shipments there happened to be no sign of the crew. He allotted a number of the crew members to take control of the ship so that both the vessels could sail together, which they did, on calm waters, for two days. But then a storm drifted them apart and when the storm cleared there was no sign of the other ship.

The stories start to vary here onwards. Some of them claim that Captain Baker’s scout caught sight of the vessel through his spyglass and found it adrift once again sailing away aimlessly.

It took hours before Ellen Austin could catch up with it and I am sure you will not be surprised when I say there was no one on the ship.

Some other stories say that Baker tried this thing one more time: putting a prized crew on the ship and then sailing with it but was not lucky enough to be greeted with a different outcome.

There is another story that says that the vessel was later discovered with a different crew that seemed to have replaced the prize crew put by Captain Baker. The Ellen Austin too appears to have its mystery which shows no sign of getting demystified shortly.

3) USS Cyclops

In March 1918, one of the largest fuel ships of the US Navy, the USS Cyclops set sail from Brazil to Baltimore through the Bermuda region. It was carrying 10,800 tons of manganese ore and 309 crew members. Its disappearance caused the loss of a considerable number of lives, possibly the largest in history due to a single accident.

They set sail on a pleasant day that later turned out to be quite unfavorable for them. It sent just one message, that too nothing that could lead to the conclusion that the ship was in some danger. But that was the last time people got to hear from it.

The area was scoured, but nothing showed up: no remains of the ship or the crew. The captain had not sent any distress signal, neither had he responded to radio calls from nearby vessels.

Several theories have sprung up related to this disappearance, but the naval investigators have failed to confirm any of them. The ship had vanished and has thus been entered into the list of more than 100 ships that have disappeared in the Bermuda Triangle following a similar pattern.

4) Carroll A. Deering

Several stories have been written taking inspiration from one of the most famous maritime mysteries of the Bermuda Triangle related to the Carroll A. Deering. The Carroll A. Deering was a five-masted commercial schooner that was found abandoned on the unpredictable and deadly rocks of the Hatteras Diamond Shoals, North Carolina.

It is believed that it was involved in the illegal transportation of alcohol. When the investigation team from Barbados braved the rough seas to reach Carroll A. Deering finally, there were no crew members to welcome them. No sign of their personal belongings, the ship’s navigational equipment, life rafts, logbooks were found either.

Even though as many as nine vessels had vanished from that area naval experts are nowhere close to finding the cause. “Ghost Ship of the Outer Banks,” as the disappearance of Carroll A. Deering is often called sort of opened the path for the disappearance of some other vessels in the same period.

This gave some vital information to the scientist and researchers working on the mysteries of the Bermuda Triangle, but none that could contribute towards solving the mystery.

5) Witchcraft

Christmas did not go so well for the two gentlemen captain Dan Burack and his friend Father Patrick Hogan who set sail on their cabin cruiser named Witchcraft on the 22nd of December 1967 to enjoy the beauty of the Miami lights during Christmas. It probably did not even cross a mile when the coast guard received a call from the captain saying that their ship had struck something but has suffered minimal damage. Thus, the coast guard set off immediately to tow the ship to the shore and reached the spot within 19 minutes. But surprisingly no ship was found.

Let me clarify a few things first. The cruiser was supposed to be unsinkable. Moreover, it had a range of safety devices including flares, distress signal devices along with jackets, lifeboats, etc.

There was no sign that indicated their usage and of course there was no sign of the ship either — spanning the next few days. Several square miles of the ocean were searched but with little success.

What witchcraft resulted in the complete disappearance of the cruise ship is yet to be known for nothing of the boat has been found of the ship even today. All it has left us with are stories and speculations that lead to more confusion and nowhere close to a solution.

 

Similar Posts

One Comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *