The Unsolved Mysterious Disappearances in the Bermuda Triangle

Have you ever heard of the mysterious disappearances in the Devil’s triangle, the unsolved mystery that leaves many people oblivious as to how it has taken away the lives of countless amounts of humans? Is the legend true and is there something extraordinary truly going on, or is it just the imagination of tired, jet lagged people. Perhaps it could be the work of attention seekers? For all we know, any of these could be right!

What is the Bermuda Triangle? Some might question.

It is a loosely-defined region in the western part of the North Atlantic Ocean, where a number of aircrafts and ships are said to have disappeared under mysterious circumstances. The triangle can be roughly outlined on a map by connecting Miami, Florida, San Juan, Puerto Rico, and the Bahamas. It is an imaginary triangle to be exact. The vicinity of the Bermuda Triangle is one of the most heavily traveled shipping lanes in the world, with ships frequently crossing through it for ports in the Americas, Europe, and the Caribbean islands.

Cruise ships regularly sail through the region, and commercial and private aircrafts routinely fly over it.

Its name originated from the Bermuda Islands which pose as one of the three points of the triangle although the term “Bermuda Triangle” was not used until in 1964 by writer Vincent Gaddis in the men’s pulp magazine Argosy. Though Gaddis first came up with the phrase, a much more famous name propelled it into international popularity a decade later.

Get quality help now

Writer Lyla

Verified

Proficient in: Bermuda Triangle

5 (876)

“ Have been using her for a while and please believe when I tell you, she never fail. Thanks Writer Lyla you are indeed awesome ”

+84 relevant experts are online

Hire writer

(Bermuda Triangle: Where Facts Disappear). This location has been the crime scene for many disappearances over the past few centuries although, according to the US Navy, the triangle does not exist, and the name is not recognized by the US Board on Geographic Names (Gale Encyclopedia of the Unusual and Unexplained | 2003).

When did the legend start? Well the myth wasn’t evolved until the early 20th century but records of strange occurrences go all the way back to the 1400s. The first ever documented bizarre event dates back to Christopher Columbus’ 1493 voyage to the New World. He registered peculiar compass bearings and discovered that there was something abnormal about the nature of the water. He also reported that a great flame of fire appeared in the sea one night and that a strange light appeared in the distance a few weeks later.

Later in early 16th century, 2 extraordinary sightings of a vacant, worn out ghost ship in this region were also documented. Those 2 bizarre incidents marked the beginning of this long standing legend.

Aircrafts have been the main subject of disappearance within this mysterious region. Over the course of the past 200 years, many jets have just simply vanished without a trace in this area. The first significant happening took place in March 1918, during World War I, when the USS Cyclops vanished in the Bermuda Triangle.

That ship may have been a casualty of war, but the December 1945 disappearance of Flight 19, a training squadron of five U.S. Navy torpedo bombers, became the most notorious of disappearances associated with the Bermuda Triangle. The squadron left Fort Lauderdale, Florida, with 14 crewmen and disappeared after radioing in several distress messages. A seaplane sent in search of the squadron also vanished. Those two airplane disappearances were frequently cited as the Bermuda Triangle legend grew during the 1960s and 1970s (Gale Encyclopedia of the Unusual and Unexplained | 2003).

All of the pilots of Flight 19 were trained and when the compasses went haywire, the pilots resorted to navigating by land until the plane just dissolved from existence. Other flying machines that have disappeared in the area include a DC- 3 carrying 27 passengers in 1948 and a C-124 Globemaster with 53 passengers in 1951.

There are additional, less known happenings such as a four-engine Tudor IV air-plane lost in 1948, with 31 aboard; an American freighter, the SS Sandra (1952), which sunk without a trace; a British York transport plane, disappeared in 1952, with 33 aboard; a U.S. Navy Lockheed Constellation airplane, vanished in 1954 with 42 aboard; a U.S. Navy seaplane, 1956, with a crew of 10; a French freighter in 1970; and a German freighter, Anita, lost in 1972 with a crew of 32.

Although aircrafts were victims of the greater part of the incidents, ships had their own fair share of disasters too. The most significant of the disappearances include the Mary Celeste (1872), the Marine tankership Sulphur Queen with 39 men aboard (1963), and the nuclear-powered submarine Scorpion with a crew of 99 (1968). The Mary Celeste entered the list of supposed Bermuda Triangle mysteries many decades after its odd tragedy.

The ship set sail from New York to Genoa, Italy, but was found sailing unmanned some 400 miles off course, off the coast of Africa. Personal articles of the crew were found and food storage areas showed no sign of upheaval. A tattered sail and a missing lifeboat suggested the boat had encountered a storm, but the ship’s log, in which information was recorded as late as nine days before the ship was found, made no mention of any kind of catastrophe. (Bermuda Triangle/History.com)

There are many theories that aim to explain the accurate reason behind such events, some more logical than others. One such speculation suggests that the mythical city of Atlantis may lie at the bottom of the sea and be using its reputed “crystal energies” to sink ships and planes. Some even say that the residents of Atlantis are cannibals that feed off of humans.

Other more fanciful suggestions include time portals and extraterrestrials (Bermuda Triangle: Where Facts Disappear-Live Science). Some hypothesise that Martians have turned that portion of the globe into an alien base where they abduct mankind and transport them to other dimensions or run operations and tests on them that will aid in the development of their kind.

Some propose that a more accurate explanation lies in some sort of extremely rare and little-known – yet perfectly natural geological or hydrological explanation. For example, perhaps ships and planes are destroyed by pockets of flammable methane gas known to exist in large quantities under the sea maybe lightning or an electrical spark ignited a huge bubble of methane that came to the surface right next to a ship or plane, causing them to sink without a trace. There are a few obvious logical problems with this theory, including that methane exists naturally around the world and such an incident has never been known to happen (Bermuda Triangle: Where Facts Disappear-Live Science).

Others state that mysterious geomagnetic anomaly that creates navigational problems confusing pilots and somehow causing them to plunge into the ocean are to blame. The most rational justification though, might be that there’s nothing extraordinary about this zone. As Kusche concluded, the number of disappearances that occurred within the Bermuda Triangle wasn’t actually greater than in any other similarly trafficked area of the ocean, and that other writers presented misinformation-such as not reporting storms that occurred on the same day as disappearances, and sometimes even making it seem as though the conditions had been calm for the purposes of creating a sensational story (The Truth About the Bermuda Triangle).

In addition to that, the U.S Coast Guard maintains that losses in the area have been caused by bad weather and human error. They say the Bermuda Triangle is no more treacherous than any other waterway (Doyle 57).

In all probability, however, there is no single theory that solves the mystery. As one skeptic put it, trying to find a common cause for every Bermuda Triangle disappearance is no more logical than trying to find a common cause for every automobile accident in Arizona. Moreover, although storms, reefs and the Gulf Stream can cause navigational challenges there, maritime insurance leader Lloyd’s of London does not recognize the Bermuda Triangle as an especially hazardous place. No extraordinary factors have ever been identified. Maybe the reality is there isn’t anything supernatural in this zone after all. It may have all been just a series of coincidences and nothing more.