The real mystery of the Bermuda Triangle – Part I

There are any number of stories about mysterious disappearances of ships, planes and people in the roughly triangular area of the Atlantic Ocean with points at the island of Bermuda in the North, the Florida coast in the West and the Caribbean island of Puerto Rico in the East that covers some of the most heavily used shipping lanes in the World, and is also home to some of the most violent storms in the Atlantic including hurricane tracks. Stories in the popular media began in the 1950's with reports of disappearances going back to the case of the Ellen Austin in 1881. Probably the most infamous cases are the loss of Flight 19, a training flight of TBM Avenger torpedo bombers out of Fort Lauderdale in 1945, and the USS Cyclops a metal ore carrier that disappeared in 1918 with 309 hands, but cases are numerous. Similarly numerous are the theories surrounding the area, from the scientific to the paranormal, covering everything from magnetic anomalies, freak waves, methane gas pockets and violent storms to time portals and UFO's but there are a couple of interesting aspects that are seldom covered in reports and stories.

The first is that when the figures are actually analysed, as they were in 1992 by Lloyds of London, the maritime insurance specialists there is no significantly higher loss rate in the area than in other high traffic areas. This does not mean that there are no disappearances, just that there are not any more than might be expected. What the figures don't show though is the number of missing ships and planes that are either never found, or that when found show no obvious signs of a cause for the disappearance. When these cases are factored in the figures become highly significant. In other areas of the oceans it is relatively rare for ships to simply disappear without some identifiable cause, although it does happen. It happens more often proportionately in the triangle area than anywhere else on Earth. It is interesting to note that large parts of this region are relatively shallow so it would be expected that wrecked ships would be easier to find rather than more difficult. Indeed, the triangle is renowned for its wreck and reef diving opportunities, yet still ships and planes simply vanish.

The second interesting aspect is that the ships and planes that do disappear have something in common. They have all been lost having deviated for a number of reasons from their planned or scheduled routes. It appears that vessels that stick to their planned courses tend to navigate their routes safely, but deviation causes problems. Possible reasons suggested for this are that the charted shipping lanes are free from some of the dangers naturally found in the area such as rogue waves, or that the lanes have been positioned to avoid known volcanic rock outcrops, which can cause magnetic instrument anomalies, but there is another possibility which might also help to explain the mysterious nature of the disappearances. Since the second World War and the challenges faced by the US Navy operating in the Atlantic Ocean in tracking and dealing with the threat of German U-Boats, there has been a need for America to develop undersea technology. This need became ever more pressing through the Cold War to combat Russian nuclear submarines tracking down to Cuba. In order to develop these technologies which have included high intensity sonar “nets” and remote monitoring buoys amongst other, more advanced systems, test areas were needed, and the area around the Florida Keys was found to be ideal.

It has been known for some time that US Navy experiments with long range sonar monitoring had a dramatic effect on migrating whale populations, and it is suspected that live testing of more aggressive defensive systems may have been at least in part responsible for some of the disappearances. It is not beyond the realms of possibility that in carrying out research in this area the Navy made some rather interesting discoveries that triggered some of these unexplained events as consequences. This leads on to the discoveries made around the Island of Bimini in the Bahamas, and these will be discussed in part II of this series.