What Is The Bermuda Triangle History Essay

The Bermuda Triangle is also known as the Devils Triangle. It is an area located on the north western Atlantic, in the country of International waters, The Bahamas. The Bermuda Triangle is an extremely dangerous area for one to enter. Aircrafts and surface vessels are believed to have vanished in weird ways which are considered human error, piracy, equipment failure, or natural disasters. Important things in society have shown some of these disappearances could have been the laws of physics, paranormal, or actions performed by aliens.

I. The Triangle is located between the cities of Fort Lauderdale, Bermuda, and Puerto Rico.

A. The Bermuda Triangle is nicknamed the Devil’s Triangle.

B. In this triangle, it is said that a lot of things in weird ways happen.

II. One of the most famous disappearances is the Naval Air Flight 19.

A. 13 Avenger bombers handled by Lt. Charles Taylor left the Naval Air Station in Fort Lauderdale on routine mission to practice bombing.

B. As they all were trying to go back home, Lt. Robert Cox overheard them trying to communicate over the radio.

1. Lt. Taylor informed Lt. Cox that they were in the Florida Keys, but didn’t know how to get back to Fort Lauderdale.

2. Lt. Taylor was actually over the Bahamas not the keys and only kept going to go further out into the sea.

III. Rescue teams were sent out to find Flight 19.

A. A Martin Mariner did not make its schedule and did not answer calls.

B. Flight 19 was never found, neither was the Mariner.

Conclusion:

For years there has been an unsolved mystery of disappearances of boats and planes with no trace of evidence left behind. Could it be human error? Equipment failure? There are a lot of different things that could have happened with every disappearance within this dangerous area, the Bermuda Triangle. Many believe these disappearances are laws of physics, paranormal, or actions performed by aliens. But, nobody knows. All in all, the Bermuda Triangle is left open for everyone’s own belief. Since there was no proof of piracy, hurricanes, UFOs or any wreckage found, this is a case of mysterious incidents that will forever be unknown.

The Bermuda triangle

The Bermuda Triangle is also known as the Devil’s Triangle. It is an area located on the north western Atlantic, in the country of International waters, The Bahamas. The Bermuda Triangle is an extremely dangerous area for one to enter. Aircrafts and surface vessels are believed to have vanished in weird ways which are considered human error, piracy, equipment failure, or natural disasters. Important things in society have shown some of these disappearances could have been the laws of physics, paranormal, or actions performed by aliens.

The Bermuda Triangle is at a status of an Urban Legend. Many events that have been reported or witnessed by people, and many administration agencies have put on record as addressing that the amount and nature of vanishes is very much alike to any other part of the ocean, but people that support paranormal phenomena suggest that many events stay unexplained regardless of any huge investigation.

The border of the Triangle depends on who found it; some say its shape is like a trapezoid covering the straits of Florida, the Bahamas, and the whole area of the Caribbean Island and the Atlantic east to the Azores; others add it to the Gulf of Mexico. The more well known triangular area in a lot of documents has its parts somewhere on the Atlantic coast of Florida, San Juan, Puerto Rico, and the mid-Atlantic Island of Bermuda, with a lot of the accidents not happening as much along the southern border around the Bahamas and Florida straits.

The area is one of the biggest sailing lanes in the world, with ships crossing through it every day for traveling in the Americas, Europe, and the Caribbean Islands. Cruise ships are so big, and comfortable made to go back and forth between Florida and the Islands. It is also a huge flown route for commercial and private aircraft going towards Florida, the Caribbean, and South America from points north.

When the Legend of the Triangle showed up in newspapers by E.V.W. Jones on September 16, 1950 through the Associated Press, it was the first article of any kind. Two years after that, Fate Magazine published “Sea Mystery At Our Back Door”, a small article by George X. Sand that covered a lot of things from the loss of a few planes and ships, the loss of Flight 19, and a group of five U.S. Navy TBM Avenger bombers on a training mission. The familiar triangular area was where the losses happened and Sand’s article was the first to tell all about it. American Legion Magazine would cover Flight 19 in the April 1962 issue. The issue stated that the flight leader was heard saying, “We are entering white water, nothing seems right. We don’t know where we are, the water is green, no white.” Also, the officials at the Navy board said that the planes “flew off to mars.” This was the first article to have people curious about Flight 19, but it would take another author, Vincent Gaddis, to write about it in the February 1964 Argosy Magazine to take Flight 19 and put it together with other disappearances and put it under a new different name, “The Deadly Bermuda Triangle,” he would write more on that article with a better detailed book, Invisible Horizons, the next year. Others would go on with their own books, like, John Wallace Spencer (Limbo of the Lost, 1969-1973), Charles Berlitz (The Bermuda Triangle, 1974), Richard Winer (The Devil’s Triangle, 1974), and a lot of others, which they were all staying on the same topics made by Eckert.

A research librarian, Lawrence David Kusche, from Arizona State University and author of The Bermuda Triangle Mystery: Solved (1975) has learned a lot more about how he has been writing. His research gave out a lot of errors and disagreements between statements from eyewitnesses and Berlitz’s stories, victims, and other people involved in incidents. He stated cases where very important information did not get reported, like the disappearance of round-the-world yachtsman Donald Crowhurst, which Berlitz had showed it as a mystery, besides the good evidence he had. Another example was the story that Berlitz told as lost without a trace three days out of an Atlantic port when it had been lost three days out of port with the same name in the Pacific Ocean. There has also been a lot of incidents far outside of the area, which makes this area a lot more mysterious. The research that he would do was simple and easy. He would read newspapers and reports talking about the weather that was not mentioned in the stories.

Kusche came up with some endings of what he had been researching. One, was that with all the ships and aircrafts that had gone missing was not much higher than in any other part of the ocean. Second, tropical storms that had happened in that area were not unlikely or mysterious, which Berlitz and other writers would usually not be able to talk about those storms. Last, was that some disappearances really did not happen. One plane crash was said to be seen by hundreds of witnesses off Daytona Beach, Florida. But, checking the local newspaper, nothing was said about it. Kusche believes that the Legend of the Bermuda Triangle is surely, a mystery.

Other people have their own opinions and have done research as much as Kusche has. While the UK Channel 4 television program “The Bermuda Triangle” was being made by John Simmons of Geofilms for the Equinox Programme, the marine insurer Lloyd’s of London was asked if a lot of ships had sunk in the Bermuda Triangle area. Lloyd’s of London replied that the information he had received was not true and no ships had sunk there.

The United Coast Guard have found their ending. The disappearances that have happened are close to as many ships and aircrafts that pass through and make it through the Triangle. The Coast Guard is still unsure about the Triangle, even though they get information and publish it, a lot of documents are filed with a lot of the events written by Triangle authors. One event involving the 1972 explosion and sinking of the tanker V.A. Fogg in the Gulf of Mexico, the Coast Guard took pictures of the wreck and found a few bodies. One of the Triangle authors stated that all the bodies had vanished, with the captain’s permission, who was found sitting in his cabin at his desk, holding a coffee cup.

Curious researchers, like Ernest Taves and Barry Singer, have stated how mysteries and the paranormal are very popular and make good money. It started getting a lot of material on topics like the Bermuda Triangle. They were able to show that some of the pro-paranormal material is usually wrong or will not work, but its makers keep marketing it. They have claimed that the market is loaded with books, TV specials, etc. that help the Triangle mystery, and good researched material if people are curious about it.

Finally, if the Triangle is thought of to cross land, like parts of Puerto Rico, the Bahamas, or Bermuda itself, there is no evidence for the disappearance of any land-based vehicles or people. The city of Freeport, found inside the Triangle, works a big shipyard and an airport which usually handles 50,000 flights, and is visited by over a million tourists a year.

There are mysterious explanations of the incidents that have happened. Triangle writers have used a lot of weird ways to explain the incidents. One explanation blames it on leftover technology from the mythical lost continent of Atlantis. Sometimes put together with the Atlantis story is the deep rock composition known as the Bimini Road off the island of Bimini in the Bahamas, which is in the Triangle in some areas. Followers of the physic Edgar Cayce believe his prediction that evidence of Atlantis would had been found in 1968 which leads to the discovery of the Bimini Road. Believers describe the composition as a road, wall, or some other structure, even though geologists think it was already part of the land.

Other writers think of the incidents as UFOs. The idea came from Steven Spielberg for his science fiction film Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which shows the lost Flight 19 as alien abductions. Then there is Charles Berlitz, the grandson of an amazing specialist in language and author of a lot of information on abnormal experience, has stayed with the same huge description, and thought of the losses in the Triangle to be abnormal or unexplained forces.

There are also normal explanations of the events that have happened. Boundary problems are one of the big issues in a lot of Triangle incidents. Even though some people have guessed that unusual local magnetic abnormals can be in that area, like abnormals that have not been shown to even exist. Also boundaries have natural magnetic differences that are like Magnetic poles. For instance, in the United States the only places where magnetic north and geographic north are exactly the same on a line going from Wisconsin to the Gulf of Mexico. Navigators have known this for centuries. But the public is not as informed about it, and think there is something mysterious about a magnetic changing across an area as big as the Triangle, which it will eventually on its own.

There are actions of destruction that happen on purpose. Actions of destruction that happen on purpose can be put into two types: acts of war, and acts of piracy. Records in enemy files have been checked for a lot of losses. While a lot of sinking’s have been put to surface raiders or submarines during the World Wars and documented in a lot of the command log books, a lot of others that have happened in that type have not been proven. It might not be true that the loss of USS Cyclops in 1918, as well as her sister ships Proteus and Nereus in World War II, were put to submarines, but that information has not been found in the German records.

Piracy is the act of taking a ship or small boat on the high seas, which is still happening today. In the western Pacific and Indian oceans, piracy for cargo theft is a lot more common, drug smugglers steal nice boats for smuggling actions, and could have been apart of crew and yacht disappearances in the Caribbean. Piracy in the Caribbean was common from about 1560 to the 1760s, and famous pirates like, Edward Teach (Blackbeard) and Jean Lafitte. Lafitte is sometimes said to be a Triangle victim himself.

The Gulf Stream is almost connected to Bermuda itself. The Gulf Stream is an ocean current that is in the Gulf of Mexico, and then through the Straits of Florida, into the North Atlantic. It is a river within an ocean, and like a river, it can and does carry floating objects. It has a surface speed of up to about 5.6 mph. A small plane making water landing or a boat having an engine problem will be carried away from where its at by the current, just like it happened to the cabin cruiser Witchcraft on December 22, 1972, when it reported engine problems by the Miami buoy marker one mile from shore, but was not there when a Coast Guard got there.

One of the biggest problems of explanations to the loss of any aircraft or vessel is human error. Whether on purpose or accidental, humans have been known to make mistakes making catastrophe, and losses in the Bermuda Triangle are not acceptable. For instance, the Coast Guard did not see very good training for the cleaning of volatile benzene residue as a reason for the loss of the tanker V.A. Fogg in 1972. Human stubbornness can have caused businessman Harvey Conover to lose his sailing yacht, the Revonoc, as he sailed into the beginning of the storm south of Florida on January 1, 1958. A lot of losses stay uninformed because there is not that much wreckage which could be studied, it has been talked about on a lot of important reports.

Many people believe that hurricanes are the reason to every incident that deals with the Triangle. Hurricanes are powerful storms that are made in tropical waters, and have been responsible for thousands of lives lost and billions of dollars in damage. The sinking of Francisco de Bobadilla’s Spanish fleet in 1502 was the first recorded incident of a destructive hurricane. These storms have in the caused a lot of incidents like the Triangle.

An explanation for some of the disappearances has studied on some of the big fields of methane hydrates on the continental borders. Laboratory experiments that have happened in Australia have proven that bubbles can, honestly, sink a scale model ship by lowering the density of the water; any wreckage consistently coming up to the surface would be highly taken away by the Gulf Stream. It has been proven wrong that periodic methane eruptions (sometimes called mud volcanoes) can make spaces of frothy water that can not give adequate buoyancy for ships. If that was true, an area like that making around a ship could cause it to sink very fast and without giving a warning.

A white paper was published in 1981 by the United States Geological Survey about the appearance of hydrates in the Blake Ridge area, off the south eastern United States coast. Although, according to a USGS web page, no big releases of gas hydrates are believed to have happened in the Bermuda Triangle for the past 15,000 years.

In many oceans around the world, rogue waves have caused ships to sink and oil platforms to go down. Those waves are believed to be a mystery and until just recently were believed to be a myth. Although, rogue waves do not account for the missing aircraft.

A lot of incidents have happened throughout years in the Bermuda Triangle. Flight 19 was a training flight of TBM Avenger bombers that went missing on December 5, 1945 while over the Atlantic. The squadron’s flight path was planned to take them east for 120 miles, north for 73 miles, and then back over a final 120-mile length that would take them back to the naval base, but they never came back. People believed that the flight happened in an unusual phenomena and usual magnetic readings, and that the flight happened on a nice day while being watched by an experienced pilot, Lt. Charles Carroll Taylor. What made the disappearance worse, was that the Navy’s report of the accident was said “causes or reasons unknown.” It is believed that Taylor’s mother wanted to save her son’s reputation, so she made them write “reasons unknown” when actually Taylor was 50 km NW from where he thought he was.

Adding to the whole mystery, a search and rescue Mariner aircraft with a 13-man crew was ordered to help the missing squadron, but the Mariner itself was never heard from again. Later, there was a report from a tanker taking off the coast of Florida of a seen explosion at about the time the Mariner would have been on duty.

The basic facts of this description of the story are most likely usable, some important information is missing. The weather was getting stormy by the end of the incident, and naval reports and written recordings of the conversations between Taylor and the other pilots of Flight 19 do not say there were magnetic problems. With that, only Taylor had any good flying time, but he was not familiar with the south Florida area and had a history of getting lost in flight, that was done three times during World War II, he led planes into the water twice.

Another incident was the Mary Celeste. The mysterious disappearance in 1872 of the 282-ton brigantine Mary Celeste but is not connected to the Triangle that much, the ship had been abandoned off the coast of Portugal. The incident got people confused with the loss of a ship with a similar name, the Mari Celeste, a 207-ton paddle steamer which hit a reef and sank fast off the coast of Bermuda on September 13,1864. Kusche stated that a lot of the facts about this incident were actually about the Marie Celeste, the fictional ship from Arthur Conan Doyle’s short story “J. Habakuk Jephson’s Statement” (based on the real Mary Celeste incident, but fictionalized).

There is also, the Ellen Austin supposedly came across an abandoned ship, placed on board a prize crew, and tried to sail with it to New York in 1881. According to the stories, it disappeared; others state that it reappeared without the prize crew, then disappeared again with another prize crew on board. A check of Lloyd’s of London records proved that the Meta existed and was built in 1854; in 1880 the Meta was renamed Ellen Austin. There are no real facts for this vessel, or any vessel at that time, that would have a lot of missing men put on board that later disappeared.

Then there is the USS Cyclops. The event ending in one of the biggest loss of life in the history of the US Navy not connecting to combat happened when USS Cyclops, under the order of Lt Cdr G. W. Worley, went missing without a trace with a crew of 309 sometime after March 4, 1918, after leaving the island of Barbados. However, there is no strong evidence for a theory, a lot of independent theories exist, some blaming storms, and some suggesting that wartime enemy action was to blame for the loss.

There is another, which is Theodosia Burr Alston. She was the daughter of the United States Vice President Aaron Burr. Her disappearance has been thought of a least once to be connected to the Triangle. She was a passenger on board of the Patriot, which sailed from Charleston, South Carolina to New York City on December 30, 1812, and was never heard from again. Piracy and the War of 1812 have been stated to be explanations, just like a theory putting her in Texas, far outside of the Triangle.

Spray, is another incident that has happened. S.V. Spray was a fishing boat made as an ocean cruiser by Joshua Slocum and used by him to finish the first ever single-handed circumnavigation of the world, between 1895 and 1898. In 1909, Slocum set sail from Vineyard Haven heading for Venezuela. Not him or Spray were ever seen again. There is no evidence they were in the Bermuda Triangle when they disappeared, but neither is there any evidence of paranormal action.

A five-masted schooner was built in 1919, the Carroll A. Deering was found abandoned at Diamond Shoals, by Cape Hatteras, North Carolina on January 31, 1921. Rumors at the time stated that the Deering was a victim of piracy, maybe connected with the illegal rum-running trade during Prohibition, and maybe involving another ship, S.S. Hewitt, which disappeared at about the same time. Hours later, an unknown steamer sailed by the lightship along the track of the Deering, and ignored all the signals from the lightship. It is thought of that the Hewitt could have been the mystery ship, and maybe involved in the Deering crew’s disappearance.

On December 28, 1948, a Douglas DC-3 aircraft, number NC16002, disappeared while on a flight from San Juan, Puerto Rico, to Miami. No trace of the aircraft or the 32 people on board was ever found. From the documentation put away by the Civil Aeronautics Board investigation, maybe a hint to the plane’s disappearance was found, but hardly known by the Triangle writers: the plane’s batteries were looked at and found to be low on charge, but commanded back into the plane without a recharge by the pilot while in San Juan. Whether or not this led to complete electrical failure will never be known. Although, since piston-engine aircrafts depend on magnetos to help spark to their cylinders rather than a battery powered ignition coil system, that theory is not very believable.

G-AHNP Star Tiger disappeared on January 30,1948 on a flight from the Azores to Bermuda; G-AGRE Star Ariel disappeared on January 17, 1949, on a flight from Bermuda to Kingston, Jamaica. Both were Avro Tudor IV passenger aircraft worked by British South American Airways.

Works Cited

Gian J. Quasar (2003). Into the Bermuda Triangle: Pursuing the Truth Behind the World’s Greatest Mystery (Reprinted in paperback (2005))

Daniel Berg (2000). Bermuda Shipwrecks.

Adi-Kent Thomas Jefferey (1975). The Bermuda Triangle.

http://www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq8-1.htm. (June 1974)

http://www.unmuseum.org/triangle.htm (1995)

Reflection

I chose this particular topic on the Bermuda Triangle because I have heard many things about this

triangular area. I figured if I did a project on it, I could find out myself and real facts instead of what people

think. My family and I have always been interested in learning what the Triangle was and now I will be sure

to inform them on what I have learned. I chose to make a map of where the Bermuda Triangle was located

because I think people should known instead of trying to figure it out in their head. The visual has helped

me also, so I am not trying to picture what it looks like.

The three most important things I learned while doing this project was what occurred during the

disappearance of Flight 19, Lawrence David Kusche’s opinion on the incidents, and last, how ships and

aircrafts might sink within the Triangle. I never knew anything like what happened to Flight 19 could

happen like that and how they could disappear and never be seen again, it amazes me. Kusche’s opinion on

the incidents is that, it is all just a mystery that will never be solved. Finally, I would have never thought

ships and aircrafts would able to sink even when flying, but I believe everything is possible.

My Mom helped me out with this project, but knowing my Mom, she helps me out with

everything and I love her for that. Most of the time, I worked on it myself and my Mom just helped me out

with the final draft and the rough draft. I feel no body really influenced me throughout this project, maybe

Kusche because he trully did hard work and I respect people who work hard. I do not think anyone will be

affected by this project but I am sure they will love to here all the information I have gathered up.

I can share this new information all around the community! Especially in my school, I know some

people who want to know what the Triangle is all about and what really happens within it. Now, I have the

answer. It is a mystery. I will use this information throughout the rest of my high school years and even

maybe throughout college. The topic will probably get brought up and I will know a lot more then any

body else.

There is not three ways my perspective on life has changed from the information I learned

but there is one way. To cherish every moment your living and to appreciate every body you have because

you never know what the future holds and when people can just disappear. I believe that I could have done

a few things different but not a lot. I could have organized my things better to where I would not have lost

a lot of my notes but I dealt with it and continued my project. I think I could have managed my time better

and maybe gotten the project done a little more faster. But, with all my hard work, I feel like I

accomplished something!

.

CHECKLIST

The outline

The introduction states the main topic or idea of the outline, and the conclusion summarizes it.

Each sub-topic describes the main idea for a paragraph.

Supporting information and details for a sub-topic are listed under the sub-topic with each piece of information listed separately.

When supporting information is listed under a sub-topic, there are at least two pieces of information listed. If there is only one piece of information to support a sub-topic, the information is included in the sub-topic.

The report

The report follows the organization of the outline.

Each paragraph in the report matches a sub-topic in the outline, and presents the information and details listed under the sub-topic.

Each paragraph includes a topic sentence that summarizes the main idea of the paragraph.

Every sentence begins with a capital letter.

Every sentence ends with a period, question mark, or exclamation mark.

All words are spelled correctly.

There are no missing words.