The Bermuda Triangle, also called the Devil’s Triangle or Hoodoo Sea among other names, is an infamous region in the North Atlantic Ocean bounded by Bermuda, Puerto Rico, and Florida. There are no official maps that show the Triangle’s boundaries, nor does the U.S. Coast Guard recognize the existence of such a hazardous geographic area. Although hundreds of people, ships, and planes have mysteriously vanished in the Triangle for decades without leaving any traces behind, the Coast Guard and accident reports indicate that the number of sunken ships and planes is not any higher there than in other areas. Among the disappearances are U.S. Navy planes and ships such as Flight 19 and the USS Cyclops. While government officials and many scientists attribute the disappearances to natural causes, in the popular imagination they have remained colossal mysteries and have inspired many theories blaming supernatural powers or the U.S. government.
The name “Bermuda Triangle” was inspired by an article published in Argosy magazine in 1964 in which American author Vincent H. Gaddis portrayed some unexplained disappearances in that specific area of the Atlantic. Four incidences in particular, which Gaddis discusses in his article, have led to the creation of the myth of the region’s supernatural forces: the SS Marine Sulphur Queen, the USS Cyclops, Flight 19 (which inspired Steven Spielberg’s 1977 science fiction film classic, Close Encounters of the Third Kind), and the DC-3 passenger plane NC16002.
The SS Marine Sulphur Queen was one of many T2 tankers built in 1944 to transport oil but was later converted into the first tanker to carry molten sulfur. Loaded with its cargo, the ship left from Beaumont, Texas, for Norfolk, Virginia, then vanished near the southern Florida coast on February 4, 1963. A routine radio message sent out by the ship was its last signal. While a life preserver and other floating artifacts were found in a massive search operation, the wreck and its thirty-nine crewmembers have never been located. It is known that fires regularly erupted on the ship, and investigations by the Coast Guard indicated that a poor design and lax maintenance of the ship had made it unsafe to sail. Gaddis ignored these findings in his article written a year later without offering his own theory, and like many other writers following him, reduced the ship’s disappearance to a voyage into the unknown. The ship’s disappearance is actually not entirely unusual as some of its sister ships have vanished in the Triangle as well, such as the SS Sylvia L. Ossa, which disappeared east of Bermuda on October 15, 1976, leaving only debris and a lifeboat behind.
The most famous U.S. Navy ship lost in the Triangle was the USS Cyclops during World War I in early 1918. More than 300 crewmembers and passengers vanished without a trace for unknown reasons, making it among the worst noncombat disasters in the U.S. Navy. The vessel was a steel-hulled warship built years before the war and one of the U.S. Navy’s four Proteus-class colliers, originally transporting coal for the U.S. Navy during the war. Beginning in January 1918, the Naval Overseas Transportation Service used the ship to transport fuel to British ships in the Brazilian waters of the South Atlantic. On February 20, the vessel left Rio de Janeiro with a load of manganese ore for Baltimore, Maryland, reaching Barbados on March 3. After departing on March 4 from this unscheduled stop to take on additional supplies, the ship vanished, never arriving in Baltimore. No wreckage has ever been found. Before leaving Rio, the ship’s commanding officer had reported that the starboard engine was inoperative. A survey board that had confirmed this recommended that the ship be repaired in the United States. According to officials, the ship was heavily overloaded and probably sank in an unexpected storm. In 1941, during World War II, its two sister ships, USS Nereus and USS Proteus, also disappeared without a trace on the same route doing similar duty.
In 1976 the Panamanian cargo ship Sylvia L. Ossa was reported missing in the infamous area known as the “Bermuda Triangle” with 37 crewmen on board. The 590-foot ship vanished without a trace and was never seen again. Although hundreds of vessels have been lost over the centuries in the section of ocean bounded by Bermuda, Puerto Rico, and Florida, the name “Bermuda Triangle” first appeared in print in 1964. (AP Photo)
A famous disappearance of an aircraft in the Triangle was that of Flight 19 on December 5, 1945, which had departed from the U.S Naval Air Station in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. During their training mission off the Florida coast, five TCM Avenger Torpedo bombers and fourteen Navy aviators vanished without a trace. The compasses were malfunctioning, and according to a radio message between the leading pilot, an experienced flight instructor, and the copilot, the leader had become severely disoriented, being uncertain of the direction of the Florida coast. Radio contact was lost before the flight could be located. In the World War II era, a pilot flying over water had to know his starting point, the direction in which he had flown, as well as his speed and how long he had flown. The U.S. Navy proposed that the aircraft eventually ran out of fuel and was forced to land at sea in darkness, but that the sea was rough and too dangerous for landing. Another explanation blames unexpected weather conditions developing during the flight, although there was no evidence of such storms at that time. The search was unsuccessful and one search aircraft vanished as well. According to a report from a merchant ship off Fort Lauderdale, the search aircraft exploded at sea. No trace has ever been found.
Another plane that vanished was the DC-3 passenger plane NC16002, which is considered to be one of the most reliable aircrafts ever built. On December 28, 1948, it flew from San Juan in Puerto Rico to Miami in Florida. The weather was fine and the plane was only fifty miles from Miami when it sent its last message requesting to land in twenty minutes. It disappeared together with its three crewmembers and twenty-nine passengers. It was the first DC-3 aircraft to disappear. While official investigations have been unable to determine the cause, it has been proposed that the plane’s batteries were not fully charged before takeoff, which may have interfered with communications between Miami and the plane. Miami had sent a message that the wind had changed directions, which may not have been received by the pilot and could have resulted in his flying fifty miles off course and running out of fuel.
Mainstream science suggests that finding wreckage is a nearly impossible task, even with modern technology. The region’s ocean floor is a complex maze with shallow banks and depths several miles deep. Additionally, the Gulf Stream, a strong ocean current of warm, tropical water, causes a rapid dispersion of debris. However, some people believe that the U.S. government is responsible for the disappearances, maintaining that the Bermuda Triangle hosts a secret U.S. Atlantic Undersea Test and Evaluation Center, also called AUTEC, similar to Area 51. According to this theory, AUTEC is an area where the government tests top-secret aircraft and studies captured UFOs. Others claim that some intelligent and technologically advanced race lives in the sea and studies humans, while still others believe that aliens are responsible for the disappearances, transporting humans through a portal to an alien dimension. That portal could also be a simple rift in space-time that opens up occasionally and swallows people and their vessels. As legends propose that the mythical island of Atlantis sank in this region several thousand years ago, one theory speaks of its civilization shooting death rays up from the sunken island. Dr. Kenneth McAll, a Christian psychiatrist from England, who heard sounds similar to mournful singing while on a cruise, concluded that a curse lies on the Triangle, caused by the spirits of the many black African slaves who had been thrown into the water on their way to America by captains who wanted to claim money from insurance companies. Some people believe that all these legends actually provide a perfect cover story for pirates robbing and sinking vessels.
An unorthodox scientific explanation of the mysterious Triangle is offered by Bruce Gernon, who survived two incidences in his plane in 1970 and in 1996. He claims that “electronic fog” was the reason for the magnetic navigational instruments to malfunction in his plane and in all the vessels that had disappeared in this region, including Flight 19. For miles, Gernon saw only fog, finding himself over Miami Beach after only thirty-four minutes, although the distance would have required a seventy-five-minute flight. He suggests that this electronic fog, a rare natural phenomenon, causes equipment malfunctions, pilot disorientation, and time distortions. Furthermore, he claims that the fog attaches itself to the vessel and travels with it. However, mainstream science has rejected the existence of electronic fog.
Bennington Triangle
“The Bennington Triangle,” a name credited to local author Joe Citro, is a section of Vermont backcountry including the Glastenbury wilderness; it contains a spooky ghost town, an abandoned resort, roads to nowhere, and numerous gaping cellar ruins; it also plays host to unexplained lights in the sky and Wejuk, the Bigfoot of the indigenous Abenaki. It takes its name from Mount Glastenbury, a destination along the Appalachian Trail that draws many serious hikers. Numerous unexplained disappearances have occurred within the Bennington Triangle. Local folklore suggests that these may go back centuries, but newspaper accounts and police records confirm unresolved missing persons cases there since at least the 1940s. In recent years this locale has received more national attention, notably by William Shatner’s Weird or What? program in 2012; it is also widely supposed that the Blair Witch Project film was based in part upon the Bennington Triangle.
C. Fee
In contrast to such theories, mainstream science proposes that a combination of natural forces and human failure have led to the disappearances. Some evidence seems to support the idea that a magnetic compass in this region sometimes points to the genuine north instead of the magnetic north, resulting in faulty navigation. Another explanation is the weather disasters, such as hurricanes and tropical storms, that often pass through the Bermuda Triangle, and that before the invention of improved weather forecasting, ships simply sank in these storms. The Gulf Stream with its rapid changes in weather can be dangerously violent as well. As there are many islands in the Caribbean, waters are often shallow and thus hazardous for ship navigation. So-called rogue waves, which have been scientifically acknowledged, could serve as another explanation. It is unclear how they are created, but they come out of nowhere and are between ten to fifteen feet high, sinking ships within seconds. Another theory posits methane gas erupting from the ocean floor. The gas creates a hole in which the ship is pulled down and is filled with surrounding water, resulting in its immediate sinking. In the air, the gas could disrupt planes at low altitude. As the methane gas is lighter than air, it affects the plane’s instruments. The pilot who trusts his instruments would keep adjusting the plane’s altitude and end up crashing into the water.
Despite these scientific explanations, the Bermuda Triangle has not lost its reputation as a haunted place. In addition to Gaddis’s article, many other publications have explored its mysteries. In 1969, John Wallace Spencer’s book Limbo of the Lost sought to explain the disappearances, pointing out that unknown forces could be involved. It was followed by a feature documentary called The Devil’s Triangle in 1974. The same year American linguist Charles Berlitz published The Bermuda Triangle, which became a best-seller, proposing that the lost island of Atlantis was somehow connected to the mystery. These publications have contributed to establishing the myth of the Devil’s Triangle in popular culture and have ensured that the Bermuda Triangle will never lose its terrifying grip on the public imagination.
Daniela Ribitsch
See also Area 51; Atlantis; Conspiracy Theories
Further Reading
Berlitz, Charles. 1974. The Bermuda Triangle. Garden City, NY: Doubleday.
Gaddis, Vincent H. 1964. “The Deadly Bermuda Triangle.” Argosy (February): 28–29.
Kusche, Larry. 1995. The Bermuda Triangle Mystery—Solved. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.
MacGregor, Rob, and Bruce Gernon. 2005. The Fog. A Never Before Published Theory of the Bermuda Triangle Phenomenon. Woodbury, MN: Llewellyn.
Quasar, Gian. 2005. Into the Bermuda Triangle: Pursuing the Truth Behind the World’s Greatest Mystery. Camden, ME: International Marine/Ragged Mountain Press.
Winer, Richard. 1974. The Devil’s Triangle. New York: Bantam Books.
Bermuda Triangle—Primary Document
Disappearance of the USS Cyclops in the Bermuda Triangle (1918)
The Bermuda Triangle became the subject of a great deal of speculation about the paranormal when airplanes began to disappear in the region in the 1950s. However, due to sudden weather events, the stretch of Atlantic Ocean between Florida, Puerto Rico, and Bermuda had always been dangerous for ships. In 1918, the USS Cyclops disappeared, leading to speculation about a possible mutiny, German submarines, and even a giant octopus. In these two documents from 1918, speculation rages as to what befell the ship’s crew of 306 men, the U.S. Navy’s largest noncombat loss of life in a single incident to this day.
TELEGRAM FROM U.S. CONSUL IN BARBADOS CHARLES LIVINGSTON
Secretary of State,
Washington, D. C.
April 17, 2 p.m.
Department’s 15th. Confidential. Master CYCLOPS stated that required six hundred tons coal having sufficient on board to reach Bermuda. Engines very poor condition. Not sufficient funds and therefore requested payment by me. Unusually reticent. I have ascertained he took here ton fresh meat, ton flour, thousand pounds vegetables, paying therefore 775 dollars. From different sources gather the following: He had plenty of coal, alleged inferior, took coal to mix, probably he had more than fifteen hundred tons. Master alluded to by others as damned Dutchman, apparently disliked by other officers. Rumored disturbances en route hither, men confined and one executed; also had some prisoners from the fleet in Brazilian waters, one life sentence. United States Consul-General Gottschalk passenger, 231 crew exclusive of officers and passengers. Have names crew but not of all the officers and passengers. Many Germanic names appear. Number telegraphic or wireless messages addressed to master or in care of ship were delivered at this port. All telegrams for Barbadoes on file head office St. Thomas. I have to suggest scrutiny there. While not having any definite grounds I fear fate worse than sinking though possibly based on instinctive dislike felt towards master.
LIVINGSTON,
CONSUL.
NEWSPAPER ACCOUNT IN THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Cyclops Lost in Great Gale, Says Mate of Amolco
NORFOLK, Va., April 19. –Frank admission today by Mrs. Samuel W. Worley, wife of the commander of the missing collier Cyclops, that her statement yesterday that the Cyclops was safe was based on rumors and a telephone conversation with a friend, strengthened the report of an officer of the steamer Amolco, just arrived, that the collier was lost in a storm.
The wife of the missing commander said she had been told over that telephone by a naval officer that the Cyclops was safe and would shortly be heard from, but on investigation it was learned that the source of the officer’s information was indefinite.
W. J. Riley, third officer of the steamship Amolco, which cleared from the West Indian island port three days ahead of the Cyclops, stated today that he believed the Cyclops was lost at sea during a terrific gale that swept the sea 125 miles south of Nantucket. The Amolco was damaged to the extent of about $150,000, Riley said. The vessel was loaded with molasses, bound for Boston. The speed of the Cyclops, he says, would have placed her in the gale, and he says he is positive she was sunk.
Sources: Telegram available online at Bermuda Triangle Central. http://bermudatrianglecentral.blogspot.com/2012/05/uss-cyclops.html; newspaper account from The Washington Times, April 19, 1918, 11, available online at The Library of Congress. http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84026749/1918-04-19/ed-1/seq-11/.