Anupama Nair
The Bermuda Triangle Mystery is one of the unsolved mysteries even today. For more than five centuries, the Atlantic Ocean’s renowned Bermuda Triangle has captured the human imagination with unexplained disappearances of ships, planes, and people. The Bermuda Triangle or Devil's Triangle as it is called is a region in the western part of the North Atlantic Ocean, where a number of ships and later planes are believed to have disappeared under mysterious circumstances. However, some sources dismiss the idea that there is any mystery at all. We can draw an area in the land and put a board asking people to refrain from going there, but it is impossible to do that mid-ocean. It is believed that more than 50 ships and 20 planes have mysteriously disappeared here. What is the mystery? Is it undersea currents, but how can planes disappear in undersea currents? The vicinity of the Bermuda Triangle is amongst 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 liners and merchant ships regularly sail through the region, and commercial and private aircraft fly over it.
Let me tell you about the story of the infamous triangle in the sea. The area, whose boundaries are not universally agreed upon, has a vaguely triangular shape marked by the Atlantic coast of Florida (United States), Bermuda, and Puerto Rico. Unexplained circumstances surround some of these accidents that occurred there. Ships and planes have vanished into thin air, from the area in good weather without even radioing any distress messages. But although myriad fanciful theories have been proposed regarding the Bermuda Triangle, none of them prove any mysterious disappearances occur more frequently here than in other well-traveled sections of the ocean.
I am taking you on a journey down memory lane i.e., in 1492, When Christopher Columbus sailed through the area on his first voyage to the New World in search of India, he reported “that a great flame of fire (probably a meteor) crashed into the sea one night and that a strange light appeared in the distance a few weeks later”. He also wrote about “erratic compass readings, perhaps because at that time, an area of the Bermuda Triangle was one of the few places on Earth where true north and the magnetic north were the same. In the 20th century Joshua Slocum, after gaining widespread fame as the first person to sail alone around the world disappeared on a 1909 voyage from Martha’s Vineyard (Cape Cod in the state of Massachusetts, US) to South America. Though it’s unclear exactly what happened, many sources later attributed his death to the Bermuda Triangle.
There are many reasons attributed to the mystery of the Bermuda Triangle. Some researchers speculated that unknown and mysterious forces account for unexplained disappearances, such as extraterrestrials capturing humans for study. They attribute the events to Unidentified Flying Objects or UFOs. Some others, list several theories attributing the losses in the Triangle to anomalous or unexplained forces. Although theories of supernatural causes for these disappearances abound, they are most likely responsible.
Some scientists do not believe in UFOs, they believe in the influence of the lost continent of Atlantis. They speak of the submerged rock formation known as the Bimini Road in the island of Bimini in the Bahamas, which is in the Triangle. What is Atlantis? Atlantis is an imaginary island mentioned by the famous Greek writer Plato in his works Timaeus and Critias. The story is about the kingdom of Atlantis and their famous naval power that attacked Athens the famous kingdom of Greece. Athens repels the Atlantean attack unlike any other nation of the world in those times, supposedly bearing witness to the superiority of Plato's concept of a state. The story ends with Atlantis falling out of favor with the Greek Gods and submerging into the Atlantic Ocean. Followers of the Atlantis theory believe that evidence of Atlantis would be found in 1968, as referring to the discovery of the Bimini Road. Believers describe the formation as a road, wall, or other structure, but the Bimini Road is of natural origin.
Many scientists believe that vortices suck objects into them and other such fanciful ideas. Some explanations are more based in science, if not in evidence. These include oceanic flatulence (methane gas erupting from ocean sediments) and disruptions in geomagnetic lines of flux. So maybe we’ve found the truth after all. Some other scientists blame the “rogue waves” which are massive waves that can reach heights of up to 100 feet and would theoretically be powerful enough to destroy all evidence of a ship or an airplane. The Bermuda Triangle is located in an area of the Atlantic Ocean where storms from multiple directions can converge, making “rogue waves” a reality.
Environmentalists explain many, if not most, of the disappearances. The majority of Atlantic tropical storms and hurricanes pass through the Bermuda Triangle, and in the days prior to improved weather forecasting, these dangerous storms claimed many ships. The area can cause violent changes in weather. Additionally, the large number of islands in the Caribbean Sea creates many areas of shallow water that can be treacherous to ship navigation. The U.S. Navy and U.S. Coast Guard contend that there are no supernatural explanations for disasters at sea. Their experience suggests that the combined forces of nature and human fallibility outdo even the most incredulous science fiction.
Let us see some incidents that happened in the Bermuda Triangle. USS Cyclops is an incident that occurred in the US Navy. The Cyclops, carrying a full load of metal ore, went missing without a trace with a crew of 309 in 1918, near the island of Barbados. Although, there is no strong evidence for any single theory, many independent theories exist, some blaming storms, some capsizing, and some suggesting the enemy attack was to blame for the loss. Was it a coincidence that two of Cyclops's sister ships, Proteus and Nereus were subsequently lost in the North Atlantic during Second World War II? In all three cases, structural failure due to overloading with a much denser cargo than designed is considered the most likely cause of the sinking of the ships.
Let us see the incidents that occurred in this millennium. In 2005, A Piper PA-23 23 disappeared between Treasure Cay Island, near Bahamas and Fort Pierce, in Florida. There were three people on board. In 2007 and nothing is known about them. In 2007, another Piper disappeared near Berry Island after flying into a level 6 thunderstorm and losing altitude. Two people lost their lives. In 2015, two teenage boys went on a fishing trip and was reported missing. A year later, the US Coastguard found the boat in Bermuda, but the boys are still missing. In 2015, a US Ship, with 33 crew members sank off the coast of the Bahamas within the triangle. What is surprising is, that the wreckage was found 15,000 feet below sea level. There is no news of the missing crew.
In early 2017, Turkish Airlines flight TK183 was forced to change its direction from Havana, Cuba to Washington Dulles airport after some mechanical and electrical problems occurred over the triangle. Thankfully, there were no casualties. In 2017 again a private MU-2B aircraft was at an altitude of 24,000 feet when it vanished from radar and radio contact with air traffic controllers in Miami and the wreckage of the flight was found much later.
The ocean has always been a mysterious place to humans from time immemorial, and when foul weather or poor navigation is involved, even in modern times, it can be a very deadly place. This is true all over the world. There is no evidence that mysterious disappearances occur with any greater frequency in the Bermuda Triangle alone than in any other, well-traveled area in other oceans.
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