The Bermuda Triangle – a region in the Atlantic Ocean, bounded by Florida and Bermuda, Puerto Rico and the Bahamas – is famous for the mysterious, mystical disappearances of ships and aircraft. For many years, he has been a real horror to the world’s population – because the stories of unexplained catastrophes and ghost ships are all heard.
Numerous researchers try to explain the anomaly of the Bermuda Triangle. Basically, these are the theories of abduction of ships by aliens from outer space or by residents of Atlantis, movements through holes in time or breaks in space and other paranormal causes. None of these hypotheses has yet been confirmed.
Opponents of “otherworldly” versions claim that reports of mysterious events in the Bermuda Triangle are greatly exaggerated. Maritime and aircraft are lost in other areas of the world, sometimes without a trace. A radio malfunction or the suddenness of a catastrophe may prevent the crew from transmitting a distress signal.
In addition, finding debris at sea is a very difficult task. Also, the area of the Bermuda Triangle is very difficult to navigate: there are a large number of shallows, cyclones and storms are often born.
A hypothesis is proposed that explains the sudden death of ships and aircraft by gas emissions – for example, as a result of the decomposition of methane hydrate on the sea floor, when the density is lowered so much that the ships can not keep afloat. Some suggest that by rising into the air, methane can also cause aircraft crashes – for example, due to a decrease in air density.
It was suggested that the cause of the death of some ships, including in the Bermuda Triangle, may be the so-called wandering waves, which can reach a height of 30 meters. It is also supposed that infrasound can be generated in the sea, which affects the crew members of a ship or aircraft, causing panic, as a result of which people leave the ship.
Consider the natural features of this region – really extremely interesting and unusual.
The area of the Bermuda Triangle is just over a million square kilometers. Here, huge shallows and deep-sea depressions, a shelf with shallow banks, a continental slope, marginal and middle plateaus, deep straits, abyssal plains, deep-sea trenches, a complex system of sea currents and intricate atmospheric circulation.
In the Bermuda Triangle there are several underwater mountains and hills. The mountains are covered with powerful coral reefs. Some seamounts rise on the ocean floor alone, others form groups. By the way, there are considerably fewer of them in the Atlantic Ocean than in the Pacific.
Here is the trough of Puerto Rico – the deepest part of the Atlantic Ocean. Its depth is 8742 meters.
Under the bottom of the Bermuda Triangle are mainly sedimentary rocks – limestones, sandstones, clays. The thickness of their layer varies from 1-2 to 5-6 kilometers.
The smaller (southern) part of the triangle refers to the tropical seas, the greater (northern) – to the subtropical. The water temperature on the surface ranges from 22 to 26 ° C, but in shallow water,
In the bays and lagoons, it can be much higher. The salinity of the waters is only slightly above the average values - except, again, shallow waters, bays and lagoons, where salinity may increase. The waters here are noticeably warmer than in other parts of the ocean at the same geographical latitudes, since it is here that the warm Gulf Stream flows.
The current in the Bermuda Triangle is rapid, hampers or hinders the movement of ships sailing against it; It pulses, changes speed and location, and changes are absolutely impossible to predict; It creates irregular weather vortices that affect the weather, some of them have considerable power. At the border of its warm waters with colder surrounding waters, fogs are frequent.
Over the triangle blow trade winds – constant winds blowing in the northern hemisphere in the south-west direction, at an altitude of 3 kilometers. At high altitudes in the opposite direction, antipassates blow.
In the southern part of the triangle, roughly between Florida and the Bahamas, about 60 storm days a year. In fact, every fifth or sixth day a storm happens. If we move north towards Bermuda, then the number of storm days in a year increases, that is, a storm happens every fourth day. Very often destructive cyclones, hurricanes, as well as tornadoes.
All this contributes to the fact that in the Bermuda Triangle, many ships and aircraft are missing. Maybe the reason is not so mystical? But it’s impossible to say with certainty, as there are a lot of unexplained mysteries.
In the Bermuda Triangle, very many ships and even planes disappear, although at the time of the catastrophe there is almost always good weather. Vessels and planes die suddenly, crews do not report problems, do not send distress signals. The wreckage of aircraft and ships is usually not found, although the search is intensive, with the involvement of all relevant services.
Often, the Bermuda Triangle is credited with catastrophes, in reality happened far beyond its borders. We selected the most famous confirmed victims of the Bermuda Triangle among the ships.
“Rosalie”
In August 1840, near the capital of the Bahamas, Nassau, a French ship Rosalie was found, drifting with raised sails without a crew. The vessel had no damage and was quite suitable for swimming. It all looked as if the team had left the Rosalie a few hours ago.
Atalanta
January 31, 1880 from the Bermuda retired British training sailing ship “Atalanta”, on board which was 290 officers and cadets. On the way to England, it disappeared without leaving traces.
“Atalanta”
This incident was at the center of the public’s attention, the Times wrote every day, even months after the disappearance of the sailboat.
The Times (London), April 20, 1880, p. 12: “The gunboat Avon arrived in Portsmouth yesterday, the captain reported that he noticed a large number of floating debris near the Azores … The sea was literally swarming with them, and the harbor of the island of Faial was filled with ships that had lost their masts, and during all five Days, while “Avon” remained in the raid Fayala, the wreckage became more and more.
However, there was no evidence that any ship was sunk or broken by a storm … Some Avon officers believe that Atalanta may have encountered an iceberg, but they categorically deny that the ship could have capsized. ”
Lawrence D. Kush published in his book excerpts from newspaper articles, official reports of the British Admiralty and even evidence of two sailors, according to which “Atalanta” was a very unstable ship and with its 109 tons of water and 43 tons of ballast on board it could easily roll over and drown even During a light storm.
There were rumors that there were only two more or less experienced officers in the crew who were forced to stay in Barbados, as they fell ill with yellow fever. Consequently, 288 inexperienced sailors sailed on the ship.
Analysis of meteorological data confirmed that from the beginning of February storms were raging in the Atlantic Ocean between Bermuda and Europe. Perhaps the ship was killed somewhere very far from the Bermuda Triangle, since of the 3000 miles waiting for it, only 500 passed through the “triangle”. And yet, “Atalanta” is considered one of the confirmed victims of the “triangle”.
Unknown abandoned schooner
In 1881, the English ship “Ellen Austen” met in the open ocean abandoned schooner, completely preserved seaworthiness and only slightly damaged. Several crewmen moved to the schooner, and both ships headed for St. John’s, located on the island of Newfoundland.
Soon the fog dropped, and the ships lost sight of each other. A few days later they met again, and again there was not a single living soul on the schooner. The captain of “Ellen Austin” wanted to land another small rescue crew on the schooner, but the sailors categorically refused, saying that the schooner was cursed.
This story has two sequels with different versions. In the first version, the captain of “Ellen Austin” tried to transfer to the schooner another rescue crew, but the sailors did not want to take any more chances, and the schooner was left in the ocean.
According to another version, the second rescue crew was nevertheless transferred to a schooner, but then a squall flew in, the ships dispersed a considerable distance apart, and no one else had ever seen a schooner or her second crew.
Joshua Slocum and his yacht
Joshua Slokam, who was the first man in the history of mankind to sail around the globe alone, disappeared without a trace in November 1909, making a relatively short transition from the island of Martas-Vinyard to the shores of South America – through the Bermuda Triangle.
Sailing yacht “Spray”
November 14, 1909, he departed from the island of Martas-Vinyard and from that day on he had no news. In the opinion of those who knew Captain Slocum, he was too good a sailor, and “Spray” was too good a yacht, so that they could not cope with any of the usual difficulties that the ocean could prepare for.
Nobody knows for sure what happened to him, although there was no shortage of guesses and versions. There are “reliable” evidence of some sailors who, after the fateful date, saw the alive and unharmed Slokama in various ports of the world.
Over the years, many hypotheses have been proposed that explain its disappearance. Eventually, a hurricane of such force that could sink its yacht could fly. “Spray” could burn. He could go to the bottom, collided at night with some vessel.
In coastal waters, the collision of a small ship with a large ship is not so rare. Lights on a sailing yacht, as a rule, are rather dim, sometimes they are not visible because of its own sails. A large ship could easily be smashed into a 37-foot floor, and no one would even feel a jolt.
Edward Rowe Snow in his book “Mysterious events off the coast of New England” assures that a yacht was hit by a steamer with a displacement of about 500 tons. The “case” of Slokama was dealt with even by a court that examined a wide variety of evidence. According to the testimony of his son Viktor Slokam, his father was in brilliant form, and the yacht was practically unsinkable.
There was even a suggestion, unconditionally accepted by some “experts”, that Joshua Slokam was allegedly not happy in marriage and therefore staged a catastrophe to hide and spend the rest of his days in seclusion.
March 1918 “Cyclops”
March 4, 1918 from the island of Barbados departed cargo ship “Cyclops” displacement of 19,600 tons, on board which was 309 people and a load of manganese ore. The ship had a length of 180 meters and was one of the largest in the US Navy.
“Cyclops” on the Hudson River, 1911
It was heading to Baltimore, but it never arrived. It never sent a “SOS” signal and left no trace. Initially, it was assumed that the ship could be torpedoed by a German submarine, but at that time there were no German submarines. According to another version, the ship jumped on the mine. However, there were no minefields.
The US Navy Department after a thorough investigation published a statement: “The disappearance of Cyclops is one of the largest and most intractable cases in the annals of the navy.” It’s not even established the place of the disaster, the causes of the disaster are unknown, no trace of the ship has been found .
None of the proposed versions of the disaster provides a satisfactory explanation, under what circumstances it disappeared. ” President Woodrow Wilson said that “only God and the sea know what happened to the ship.” And one magazine wrote an article about the emergence of huge sizes of squid from the sea waters and carried the vessel into the sea.
In 1968, the navy diver Dean Haves, part of the team that was searching for the missing nuclear submarine Scorpion, found a ship’s skeleton at a depth of 60 meters 100 kilometers east of Norfolk. Considering later the photograph of the “Cyclops”, he assured that this ship was lying on the bottom.
“Cyclops” still appears on the pages of the press and not only as one of the Legend characters about the Bermuda Triangle. It was the first large ship equipped with a radio transmitter that disappeared without sending the “SOS” signal, and the largest ship of the US Navy, which disappeared without leaving any traces.
Every year, in March, when the next anniversary is celebrated from the day of its disappearance, articles about this mysterious event are being written again, old ones are being updated and new theories are being put forward and, probably, for the hundredth time the already published photo of the “Cyclops” is being published. His disappearance and to this day continue, not without reason, to call “the most unsolvable riddle in the annals of the navy.”
Carroll A. Deering
The five-mast schooner “Carroll A. Deering” was discovered in January 1921 on the shoals of the Diamond Shoals. It had no damage, sails were raised, food was on the tables, but there was not a single living soul on board, except for two cats.
The crew of the “Deering” consisted of 12 people. None of them could not be found, and it is still unknown what happened to them. June 21, 1921 in the sea was caught a bottle with a note, which, presumably, could have been thrown by someone from the crew:
“We are prisoners, we are in the hold and are handcuffed. As soon as possible, report this to the board of the company. ”
Passions flared up even more when the captain’s wife allegedly recognized the handwriting of the ship mechanic Henry Bates, and the graphologists confirmed the identity of the handwriting on the note and on his papers. But after a while it was discovered that the note was forged, and the author himself admitted this.
The judicial investigation, however, revealed important circumstances: on January 29, the schooner passed by the lighthouse at Cape Lookout, North Carolina, and signaled that it was in a dangerous situation, as it lost both ship’s anchors.
Then the schooner was seen to the north of the lighthouse from yet another vessel, while she behaved quite oddly. Meteorological reports at the beginning of February contain indications of a severe storm off the coast of North Carolina with winds, whose speed reached 130 kilometers per hour.
Cotopaxi
November 29, 1925 the ship “Cotopaxi” left Charleston with a load of coal and headed for Havana. Passing through the center of the Bermuda Triangle, it disappeared, leaving no trace and not having sent the signal “SOS”. Neither the wreckage nor the crew were discovered.
“Suduffko”
The Suduffo cargo ship left Port Newark, New Jersey, and, heading south, disappeared without a trace in the Bermuda Triangle. A representative of the company said that it disappeared, as if swallowed by a giant sea monster.
The ship sailed from Port-Newark on March 13, 1926 and headed for the Panama Canal. The port of his appointment was Los Angeles. It had a crew of 29 people and a cargo weighing about 4,000 tons, including a large batch of steel pipes.
The ship moved along the coast, but on the second day after sailing with him, communication was lost. The search for the vessel lasted a whole month, but no trace was found. True, the meteorological reports and testimony of the captain of the Aquitania liner, which was heading the same course towards Suduffko, confirm that a tropical cyclone passed through this area on March 14-15.
John and Mary
In April 1932, 50 miles south of Bermuda, the Greek schooner Embirkos discovered a two-mast vessel, John and Mary. The ship was abandoned, the crew mysteriously disappeared.
Proteus and Nereus
Proteus
At the end of November 1941 the ship Proteus departed from the Virgin Islands, and a few weeks later Nereus. Both ships were heading to Norfolk, but none of them arrived at their destination, both disappeared under mysterious circumstances.
The US was occupied by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the declaration of the war of Japan, so the disappearance of the ships did not provoke a response. The study of the archives of the German navy after the war showed that the “Proteus” and “Nereus” could not be sunk by submarines.
“Rubicon”
October 22, 1944 off the coast of Florida found a vessel without a crew. The only living creature on board was a dog. The ship was in excellent condition, except for the missing lifeboats and a torn tow line hanging from the bow of the ship.
Personal belongings of crew members also remained on board. The last entry in the ship’s log was made on September 26, when the ship was still in the port of Havana. “Rubicon”, apparently, was along the coast of Cuba.
City Bell
December 5, 1946 in the sea was discovered schooner without a crew. She followed the course from the capital of the Bahamas to Nassau on one of the islands of the archipelago – Grand Turk. On the ship everything was in order, lifeboats were in their places, only the crew disappeared without a trace.
Sandra
In June 1950, a 120-meter cargo ship Sandra, loaded with 300 tons of insecticides, left Savannah, Georgia, to Puerto Cabello, Venezuela, and disappeared without a trace. The search operation began only after it was established its six-day delay to the place of arrival.
By the way, an article about this case, written by journalist E. Jones and published on September 16, 1950, aroused great interest in the Bermuda triangle. Jones noted that Sandra is not the only vessel that disappeared here. The legend of the deadly triangle began to spread with incredible speed.
Southern Regional
In December 1954 in the Florida Straits disappeared the tank destroyer Southern Regional, which was converted into a cargo ship for the transportation of sulfur. Distress signals were not recorded either by ships at sea or by coast stations. Was found only a lifeline.
The Southern Circuit vessel with a displacement of 3,337 tons was from Port Sulfur, Louisiana, with a sulfur load to Buckport, Maine. The point of destination was Portland.
The captain was on the link of the 3rd, and then on December 5, being already off the coast of Florida. Everything was in order on the ship. On December 7, he was seen in the storm waves of Charleston.
The investigation commission found that the ship, apparently, sank in the north-east wind. In an area dominated by the Gulf Stream, this wind enjoys an unimportant reputation, as it blows directly against the current, turning the Gulf Stream into a turbulent rushing stream, and even large ships are rushing to get out of his way.
“Snow Fight”
In July 1963, a 20-meter fishing vessel disappeared, making the transition from Kingston (Jamaica) to the islands of Pedro-Key in clear weather. There were forty people on the ship, no one else heard about them. It was reported that fragments of the vessel and items belonging to the crew members were found.
Weechcraft
Mysterious disappearance occurred during the Christmas holidays of 1967. Two people on a small yacht left Miami Beach for a walk along the coast. They say they wanted to admire the festive illumination of the city from the sea.
Soon they reported on the radio that they had come across a reef and damaged the propeller, the danger did not threaten them, but they asked to tow them to the pier, and indicated their coordinates: at buoy No. 7.
The rescue boat arrived at this place in 15 minutes, but did not find anyone. An alarm was announced, but the search did not yield any results, neither the people, nor the yacht, nor the debris were found – everything disappeared without a trace.
El Carrib
On October 15, 1971, the captain of the cargo ship El Caribe, who sailed from Colombia to the Dominican Republic, reported that they would arrive at the port of destination at 7 am the next day. After that the ship disappeared. It was a fairly large dry cargo ship, the flagship of the Dominican merchant fleet, its length was 113 meters.
The ship went to the port of Santo Domingo with a crew of thirty people. It was equipped with an automatic alarm system, which in the event of an accident automatically sends a distress signal. Judging by the latest report, the ship at the time of disappearance was in the Caribbean Sea, a considerable distance from Santo Domingo.
