Travel to the Triangle
“Control tower, this is an emergency,” the worried voice said. “We seem to be off course. We cannot see land…repeat…we cannot see land.” What’s your position?” the tower asked. “We’re not sure of our position,” replied the patrol leader. “We can’t be sure where we are. We seem to be lost.” “How could that be?” the tower operators asked each other. Flight conditions were ideal. “Head due west,” came orders from the tower. There was a long silence. Then the patrol leader came in, alarm evident in his voice. “We don’t know which way is west. Everything is wrong…strange…we cannot be sure of any direction. Even the ocean doesn’t look as it should!” Though the sky was clear, and the sun was near the horizon in the west, the pilots were baffled, as if they could not see the sun at all. “We’re not certain where we are,” the flight leader continued. “We must be about 225 miles northeast of base…it looks like we are…”
Then…silence.
How is it possible that five navy torpedo bombers on a routine flight become so utterly confused and just disappeared? Nothing was ever resolved in the mysterious case of flight nineteen, only that it happened in the Bermuda Triangle. This quadrant of the world extending from Miami to Bermuda to Puerto Rico claims the average of four aircraft and twenty yachts each year. The numbers are staggering and it is obvious that something strange is happening here. While there are many theories including Aliens, UFO’s, and giant squid, some are a bit more logical. The Bermuda Triangle, in fact, can be explained logically in many different ways.
Though stories of the Bermuda Triangle seem to have anything but a logical explanation, one that is evident is the theory of magnetism. The Bermuda Triangle is home to one of two places in the world where a compass points directly north. In other areas of the world, a compass points to the magnetic north, a place that can be as much as twenty degrees different than the actual direction. Pilots who have gotten off course and gotten lost could have been experiencing this phenomenon. If the pilots changed their course to account for a twenty degrees error, they could have been hundreds of miles off course, leaving them stranded and running low on fuel, never to be found. In addition, in this area of the Atlantic, magnetic storms often strike. Charged particles from the sun interfere with the earth’s magnetic field causing these storms. Intense for several hours, they are capable of throwing off a compass and interrupting radio contact. If a pilot loses these two things, there a great risk of getting lost out over the ocean, where land is not visible. It is suspected that many planes went down because of these strange occurrences with Magnetism.
While the theory of magnetism is to blame for some, it is not responsible for all crashes of boats or planes. One of the main contributing factors is bad weather. In the case of the Rubicon, a Cuban trading vessel stationed in Havana which was found floating in the ocean with nothing but a dog on board, a hurricane had struck the city where it was harbored only days before. It is likely that bad weather and strong winds carried this boat out to sea, after the crew had gone ashore leaving their dog on the ship. Storms come and go in this area often, and are a likely explanation to many of the shipwrecks in the Bermuda Triangle.
While storms seem a bit too ordinary for the Bermuda Triangle, one thing that seems to better suit is Oceanic Flatulence. The seabed “breaking wind” is one of the latest scientific truths. At enormous pressures and low temperatures (as at the bottom of the ocean), water and gas molecules form gas hydrates. The compounds, it is argued, resemble ice but the water molecules form cages around gas molecules – such as methane. These solid hydrates retain their stability until conditions such as higher temperatures or lower pressures cause them to decompose. When they do decompose, they release enormous amounts of trapped gas. Disappearances of ships and aircraft passing over these ‘blowouts’ can then be explained. The sea could turn very violent very suddenly, into a mass of froth that could sink any ship in the area. As the methane rises, an airplane flying through the gas would experience engine failure – or worse: a spark from the engine could turn the aircraft into a flying fireball. No one took much notice of these theories until new information concerning blowouts of naturally occurring gas hydrates emerged in 1990. Though somewhat unusual, this theory is scientifically proven and explains many disappearances.
While Oceanic Flatulence is interesting and somewhat out of the ordinary, mystery still lingers on empty vessels and abandoned ships. However, this can be explained on the basis on lack of information. In almost every case where mystery still lingers, there is a definite lack of information on every occurrence. In several instances, important details, and in some cases, entire incidents are fictional. This causes the spread of rumors and lies, leading us to believe that the Bermuda Triangle is in some way, cursed.
While journalists and writers could be to blame, if we look at the triangle we realize that there really is not anything interesting or special about it. Disappearances occur all over the world, both in the oceans and over land. “Nearly two hundred vessels disappeared or were found abandoned between the New England states and northern Europe since 1850″ (Quasar 19). Although the disappearances that took place in the Bermuda Triangle are the ones that have been widely publicized, some losses that occurred in other places have been “credited” to the Triangle. One example is the Freya, a German ship, sailing off the west coast of Mexico. Due to a seaquake, an earthquake that takes place in the ocean, the ship was wrecked and the crew was lost. However, when reported it was mentioned to be near the city of Manzanillo, not specifying the country of Mexico. There is also a city in Cuba named Manzanillo, leading to the confusion. However, it was confirmed that the ship was definitely off the west coast of Mexico, nowhere near the Bermuda Triangle. If all the locations of “Bermuda Triangle Incidents” were plotted on a globe it would show that, they had taken place in an area that included the Caribbean Sea, the Gulf of Mexico, and most of the North Atlantic Ocean. The Bermuda Triangle is hardly unique.
While some vessels that supposedly crashed in the Bermuda Triangle were nowhere near it, in many cases ships that are passing through the triangle are not certain to have crashed there. In the case of the Atalanta, a ship moving from South America to England, the ship could have crashed anywhere between Bermuda and England. We are not certain, but suspicion arises, and people point fingers at this area.
The uncertainty of where ships sink is enforced by the fact that many incidents are not mysterious when they happen, but they become mysterious over time. This is due to writers and reporters searching for more shipwrecks in the Triangle and stumbling upon other shipwrecks. In many cases, the shipwrecks are not mysterious at all, but the way the reporters write about the wrecks drown them in sense of puzzlement and inscrutableness.
This flood of confusion due to writer’s works, however, lead us to wonder what happens to the planes and ships that actually do become victims of the Triangle, never to be seen again. A logical theory arises when we look at the times of the disappearances. In the case of many ships such as the City Belle, the Sandra, and the Marine Sulphur Queen, the mishaps occurred late in the afternoon or at night, making it impossible for searchers to attempt visual sightings until the next morning, giving the sea many additional hours to disperse whatever debris there might have been. As the sun would rise on the Bermuda Triangle, any trace of the wreck would be lost in the waves, leading to the conclusion that the Triangle has claimed another. Once this conclusion has been reached, it is up to people to spread rumors about the actual event, invoking mystery.
Nighttime incidents could be a factor, which causes writers to spread rumors. Another theory is that writers take past events and rename them in order to establish themselves as a good reporter, someone who got the only evidence on a wreck. This greatly increases the number of errors and embellishments of earlier accounts and in some cases, creates entirely new accounts of these disasters. People in their fallible state create stories to conjure up fame for themselves. If you know something that no one else has ever heard of, people will look up to you. In our era and the centuries before us, people strive for this state of renown. An easy solution is the Triangle.
Though writers sometimes give us too much information, some of it made up; there are cases when writers withheld information that provided an obvious solution to the disappearance. In these cases, writers did not give the full details about what actually happened, leaving it shrouded in mystery. As people look back, there is not a clear explanation for why an event happened. This theory is both logical and probable because many writers who saw it for themselves did not realize at the time what a big deal it should have been to document every ordinary wreck. Due to this fact, these ordinary crashes have now become unusual occurrences that befuddle even the smartest minds.
Throughout my study of the Bermuda Triangle, I have had feelings of fright, confusion, and a sense that it could not be explained. However, with research I finally began to realize that I could break each event down into a few different areas of logical issues that the planes and ships might have had.
The first area is natural problems that happen a lot on our earth. These normal everyday occurrences are liable to sink ships, lose planes, and confuse control towers. Natural events such as magnetic storms lead us to question what is going on out in the ocean, as it appears to be a nice, calm day. We turn to the illogical aliens and giant squid to solve these confusions, while they can be explained by something completely natural. Likewise, storms bring empty boats out to see and wreck others. It is an unpleasant fact. There should be nothing out of the ordinary to discuss because everyone knows this to be true. In the same way, though a bit more out of the ordinary, the ocean seabed releases methane gas. Scientifically proven, this natural phenomenon could bring down planes and cause ships to sink. It is a highly logical and possible theory, which has been proven to work. In addition, the sun naturally sets every night, leaving with the hope of finding anywhere in the cold, dark, ocean. Nighttime wrecks are more possible because it is harder for captains to see what is ahead of them and once they have crashed, it is virtually impossible for searchers to spot them. The mystery is retained, however, even with this logical and simple explanation.
Though natural occurrences are to blame for the majority of the wrecks, mechanical malfunction also plays a big part. When compasses fail, and GPS and radar go haywire, planes and ships are liable to crash or at least get off course. This would explain all the lost planes and ships that never showed up to where they were heading. Though seemingly too obvious for the Bermuda Triangle, this overall theory is logical, simple, and certainly true. There have been many different examples of aircraft and ships that have had mechanical problems, only to become victims of the Bermuda Triangle.
While mechanical problems cause many of the wrecks, leading to mystery, humans are the greatest causes of the confusion surrounding the Bermuda Triangle. Human error is one of our greatest downfalls. We, as humans, are naturally imperfect. We lie for our own benefit and start rumors to create intrigue and mystery. This flaw damages the reality of what is going causing the crashes and incidents in the Triangle. In a way, we like the mystery, and enjoy hearing stories about strange things happening. However, if we stop and consider what is really happening we should realize that the Bermuda Triangle is no different from any other part of the ocean. It is our own depraved state that is causing us to twist evidence, not include important details, and to make up stories of our own. Errors of writers cause us to believe these mysterious. Instead of looking at simple, logical theories, we become subject to people who have told us about aliens, wormholes, and man-eating octopi. People are to blame for the mysteries surrounding the Triangle. Writers and reporters baffle the minds of today’s Americans with false information and unreliable stories of sunken ships and disappearing planes.
Nevertheless, as the study of the Bermuda Triangle continues and the realization that it is nothing more than an exaggeration of natural and normal events hits us, we will be able to see more clearly what as actually happening. “The Legend of the Bermuda Triangle began because of careless research that was elaborated upon and perpetuated by writers who either purposely or unknowingly made use of misconceptions, faulty reason, and sensationalism. It was repeated so many times that it began to take on an aura of truth” (Kushe 277). It is clear that The Bermuda Triangle, though still shrouded in a sense of mystery to many, is made clear by looking at these theories. It turns out that The Bermuda Triangle is nothing more than a manufactured mystery.
