In this fast paced world of ours, every life on this planet has changed from what it was a hundred years ago. A child’s imagination now runs like a machine with no sense of wonder remaining. He no longer wonders why the earth rotates or why there are stars or the reason for a blue sky... he doesn’t wonder because he knows all the answers.
But even a century ago these questions could confuse the most brilliant physicists. The inquisitiveness of the modern child is fast diminishing, and with that the myths, legends and fairy-tales. But there still remains some hiatus in the minds of men today.
Brilliant brains of today are still incapable of finding answers to riddles like the Bermuda Triangle or the Loch Ness monster or yetis or crop circles. These are the riddles keeps the machinery in our brains running wildly and out of control. These are the mysteries that fire up our imagination and creativity and make us into a child seeking answers.
“The region involved, a watery triangle bounded roughly by Florida, Bermuda, and Puerto Rico, measures less than a thousand miles on any one side”... Thus George X Sand introduced “The Triangle” to his readers in October 1952 in a short article for Fate magazine, entitled “Sea Mystery at our Back Door.”
Sand’s article recounted the latest disappearance (the Sandra in 1950) and went on to discuss some of the other recent baffling mysteries like NC16002, Star Tiger and Star Ariel, aside from devoting most of the article to Flight 19. The Triangle remained a colloquial expression throughout the 1950s, employed by locals when another disappearance or unexplained crash happened.
By the early 1960s, it had acquired the name “The Deadly Triangle”. In his 1962 book, Wings of Mystery, author Dale Titler also devoted pages in Chapter 14 as “The Mystery of Flight 19”, while recounting the most recent incidents of disappearances and even began to ponder theories, such as electromagnetic anomalies and the ramifications of Project Magnet. His book would set the temper for the “Bermuda Triangle”.
Ironically, the first book published devoted to the subject was entitled Limbo of the Lost (1969) by John Spencer, in which he proposed the area had no real shape at all and elaborately tried to include the Gulf of Mexico as well as New Jersey.
It sold in limited quantities, but was later reproduced in paperback in the early 1970s and did well.
Dozens of magazines and newspaper articles came out in the early ‘70s, each author offering a general theory, shape and explanation. Richard Winer proposed “The Devil’s Triangle” and extended it nearly to the Azores near Portugal. Ivan Sanderson was sure it was an oblong shape centred almost entirely north of Bermuda.
But no book sold as well as Charles Berlitz’s 1974 bestseller, The Bermuda Triangle. Selling over five million copies in hardback, it became a phenomenon. Berlitz also cautioned about the exact shape, as had the others. But to this day the Bermuda Triangle is referred to for the same reason instead of “Deadly Triangle”. There is simply no other name that calls to mind the general area as does Bermuda Triangle.
Limbo of the Lost. The Twilight Zone. Hoodoo Sea. The Devil’s Triangle. The vast three-sided segment of the Atlantic Ocean bordered by Bermuda, Puerto Rico and Fort Lauderdale, Florida, did not receive its most famous nickname until 1964, but reports of bizarre happenings there or nearby, have been recorded for centuries. In fact, many claim that Christopher Columbus bore witness to the Bermuda Triangle’s weirdness.
As the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria sailed through the area in 1492, it is reported that Columbus’s compass went haywire and that he and his crew saw weird lights in the sky, but these events have mundane explanations. From the account in Columbus’s journal, it is thought that his compass’ slight inaccuracy stemmed from nothing more than the discrepancy between true north and magnetic north.
As for the lights, Columbus wrote of seeing “a great flame of fire” that crashed into the ocean – probably a meteor. He saw lights in the sky again on 11 October which was the day before his famous landing. The lights, brief flashes near the horizon, were spotted in the area where dry land was situated.
Another historical event retroactively attributed to the Bermuda Triangle is the discovery of the Mary Celeste. This vessel was found abandoned on the high seas in 1892, about 400 miles off its intended course from New York to Genoa.
There was neither any sign of its crew of 10 nor what had happened to them. Since the lifeboat was also missing, it is quite possible that they abandoned the Mary Celeste during a storm that they wrongly guessed the ship could not weather. But what makes it even harder to call this a Bermuda Triangle mystery is that it the ship was nowhere near the Triangle – it was found off the coast of Portugal.
The Bermuda Triangle legend really began in earnest on 5 December, 1945, with the famed disappearance of Flight 19. Five Navy Avenger bombers mysteriously vanished while on a routine training mission, as did a rescue plane sent to search for them – six aircraft and 27 men, vanished without a trace.
A search party was dispatched, which included the Martin Mariner that many claim disappeared into the Bermuda Triangle along with Flight 19.
No known wreckage from Flight 19 has ever been recovered. One reasonable explanation is that Taylor led the planes so far into the Atlantic that they were past the continental shelf. There the ocean abruptly drops from a few hundred feet deep to several thousand feet deep. Planes and ships that sink to such depths are seldom seen again. The deepest point in the Atlantic Ocean, the 30,100-foot-deep Puerto Rico Trench, lies within the Bermuda Triangle.
About 200 prior and subsequent incidents have been attributed to the inherent strangeness of the area which was forever christened the “Bermuda Triangle” by writer V Gaddis in a 1964 issue of Argosy, a fiction magazine. The vast popularity of the Devil’s Triangle brought into vogue an art that is still trying to flourish today — debunking.
The ball is then in your court, its your decision whether to take the Triangle seriously or not. Whatever might be your decision, just remember this — the Triangle is a gigantic legend and some day you will tell your grandchildren about “a mysterious place in the Atlantic Ocean...”
