Curious ElfOver the years, the Bermuda Triangle has become the subject of endless conspiracies, myths, legends, and debates. It is a big stretch of water in the Atlantic Ocean running between Miami, Bermuda, and Puerto Rico. The Bermuda Triangle has been credited with disappearances and deaths of over 8000 lives since the 19th century. While the exact number is unknown, at least 20 airplanes and 50 ships have disappeared, often without any trace, in the Triangle. In short, the Bermuda Triangle is said to vanish airplanes and swallow ships. For centuries, the Bermuda Triangle has appeared as a harrowing patch of ocean, where pilots and sailors are prone to lose contact and mysteriously disappear forever. While the United States government doesn’t recognize it as a threat or an actual geographic location, the legends and myths have long painted a picture of fear, mystery, and death.
We are breaking down some of the biggest myths of the Bermuda Triangle.
- The Bermuda Triangle and its long stretch of the sea have been turned into urban legend for centuries. It is believed that William Shakespeare based his play “The Tempest” on tales of shipwreck and sorcery in the area.
- Christopher Columbus, in his first voyage to the new world, passed through the Bermuda Triangle. He recorded that a rupturing flame of fire struck the sea, causing a surreal light to appear in the distance.
- Ellen Austin, an 1812 ton three-mast schooner sailing from Liverpool to New York in 1881, encountered a ‘ghost ship’ in the Bermuda Triangle, and things turned upside down.
According to the stories recounted in modern newspapers, when the ship approached the waters of Sargasso Sea in high mist, the crew came across an abandoned ship that was fully stocked. The crew saw it as an opportunity to capture valuable cargo along with the ship. The captain of the Ellen Austin sent in some of his men to occupy the ship. The purpose was to sail the ship side by side. However, a wicked storm followed by rain separated the two ships. The next day, they were reunited only to find that the crew sent to the ghost ship was nowhere to be found. The ship was still packed with lots of valuable resources, but it was once again abandoned.
So, Ellen Austin’s captain again tried to board the ship with some of his crew members. When they boarded the ship, a blinding, thick fog appeared a second time and separated the two ships. When the weather was calm, and the fog finally cleared. It was complete silence in the middle of the ocean. The ghost ship was nowhere to be found.
- Joshua Slocum, who was the first man to sail solo across the globe, vanished in 1895 on an expedition from Martha’s Vineyard to South America. According to some legend, Joshua was an excellent navigator and sailor, and his unforeseen vanishing is something that is hard to digest. This has been attributed to the Bermuda Triangle.
- The USS Cyclops, US Navy’s fastest and largest fuel ship, disappeared in 1918, en route to Baltimore from the Caribbean. The ship was carrying 309 crew members. The ship disappeared completely without leaving a trace of what had happened.
The legendary ship was equipped with worn out and distressed equipment. It didn’t notify or give any signal to the crew members that something hazardous was happening at sea. The ship was used in WWI to deliver aid and carried thousands of tons of manganese ore. It just disappeared without a trace.
There have been speculations about torpedoes, poison, storms, and mutiny that took place that day. However, none of it made sense at all. There was no distress call made, and if there was a wreck, the debris was nowhere to be found. According to the Washington Post, trying to solve the USS Cyclops mystery, people turned their minds to mysteries like the Bermuda Triangle. Some even claimed that it was done by a mysterious beast – a giant squid.
- In 1941, the USS Proteus, a Navy ship carrying 58 passengers from St. Thomas to the East Coast, suddenly disappeared in the Bermuda Triangle. What’s interesting is that just a month after the incident, the USS Proteus’ sister ship, the USS Nereus, vanished with 61 people on board along the same route.
Our planet is full of surprises and mysteries. We would love to know what’s with the Bermuda Triangle.
