Also known as the Devil’s Triangle, Bermuda Triangle is a region in the western part of the North Atlantic Ocean where alleged mysterious disappearances of aircrafts and surface vessels occur.
Why Named Bermuda Triangle?
The region is named the Bermuda Triangle because of the three-sided figure formed by the boundaries marked by the Straits of Florida, the Bahamas and the entire Caribbean island area and the Atlantic east to the Azores.
However, in most written works, the more familiar triangular body has as its peaks somewhere on the Atlantic coast of Miami, San Juan, Puerto Rico and the mid-Atlantic island of Bermuda. Matt Rosenburg writes, “The popular legend of the Bermuda Triangle began with a 1964 article in the magazine Argosy that described and named the Triangle."
Castleofspirits.com says the myth of the triangle began in an Associated Press dispatch of September 1950. Reporter E. V. Jones wrote of “mysterious disappearances” of ships and planes. Two years after, Fate Magazine ran an article by George Sand about a “series of strange marine disappearances, each leaving no trace whatever, that have taken place in the past few years” in a “watery triangle.”
Bermuda Triangle’s Casualties
To date, no traces of casualties have ever been found.
The December 1945 disappearance of five military airplanes and a rescue plane became the beginning of the myth. Flight 19, meant to further a training mission from Florida, involved a leader who was not feeling well, an under experienced crew, and a limited supply of fuel.
Flight 19’s path was supposed to take east to north, and then back over a final leg that would return it to the naval base. It never returned. A search and rescue Mariner aircraft with a 13-man crew was dispatched to aid the missing squadron, but the Mariner itself was never heard from again.
The list of unsolved Bermuda cases includes the disappearances of a 282-ton Mary Celeste off the coast of Portugal, derelict ship Ellen Austin in 1881, wartime active USS Cyclops, fishing boat S.V. Spray, five-masted schooner Carroll A. Deering, sulfur-tanker SS Marine Sulphur Queen, Japanese vessel Raifuku Maru and other marine vessels.
On the other hand, noted aircraft casualties include Douglas DC-3 while on a flight from San Juan, Puerto Rico to Miami, G-AHNP Star Tiger on a flight from Azores to Bermuda and G-AGRE Star Ariel on a flight from Bermuda to Kingston, Jamaica.
In 1969, a Cessna with a passenger, attempted to travel from Bahamas to Grand Turk Island. The plane was witnessed by many air traffic controllers in Cockburn's airport to circle the island for 30 minutes, after which, it flew away apparently for another island. All attempts from the ground to raise Cascio on the radio failed.
While there were recorded events linked to the mystery of Bermuda Triangle, others say that the ambiguity of Bermuda Triangle is not much of a mystery at all but has simply been the result of sensationalism of the accidents.
Lee Ann Obringer writes, “scientists have documented deviations from the norm in the area and have found some interesting formations on the seafloor within the Bermuda Triangle's boundaries. So, for those who like to believe in it, there is plenty fuel for the fire.”
Theories on Bermuda Triangle
Unmuseum states that in 1969 John Wallace Spencer wrote a book called Limbo of the Lost specifically about the Triangle and, two years later, a feature documentary on the subject,The Devil's Triangle was released. These, along with the bestseller The Bermuda Triangle, published in 1974, permanently registered the legend of the "Hoodoo Sea" within popular culture.
In 1975 Larry Kusche, a librarian at Arizona State University, reached a different conclusion. He discovered that many of the strange accidents were inconsistent and inaccurate. For example, writers had noted a ship or plane had disappeared in "calm seas" when the record showed a raging storm had been in progress.
Another example cited was, "ships had mysteriously vanished when their remains had actually been found and the cause of their sinking explained." In one case, a ship listed missing in the Triangle actually had disappeared in the Pacific Ocean some 3,000 miles away. The author had confused the name of the Pacific port the ship had left with a city of the same name on the Atlantic coast.
Aside from Kusche’s theory, there were several explanations recognized, one of which is the supernatural account. An explanation roots everything from a leftover technology from the mythical lost continent of Atlantis. Connected to this is the alleged rock formation known as the Bimini Road off the island in the Bahamas.
Some says that Atlantis could be found in the region after the discovery of the Bimini Road. Other writers attribute the events to UFOs. Steven Spielberg in his science fiction film Close Encounters of the Third Kind featured the lost Flight 19 air crews as alien abductees.
Bermuda Triangle’s Undying Mystery
Contrary to popular beliefs -- compass variations, lack of magnetic declination, deliberate acts of destructions, Gulf Streams’ current, existence of hurricanes, rogue waves, presence of natural gas methane hydrates and human errors are some of the noted “natural explanations.”
The idea of Bermuda Triangle still carrying its undying myth up to the present day shows us that there has been no strong and solitary evidence that can lay its mystery at rest. And as long as reasons are unknown, Bermuda Triangle lingers to enjoy its vain description of being “mysterious.”
Yfur Porsche Fernandez - Yfur writes diverse articles on political economy, media literacy, East Asian affairs, poverty & world development, trivial literature, ...
