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Sunday, July 21, 2019

The Bermuda Triangle

Like me, you have probably heard of the Bermuda Triangle before, but did you know it is located among the most heavily traveled shipping lanes in the world, with ships frequently crossing through it for ports in the Americas, Europe and the Caribbean islands? It is located in the Atlantic Ocean, and falls between Bermuda, Puerto Rico and Florida. i thought it was farther out to sea or something. This kind of disappointed me.

There have been a lot of "mysterious" events that happened in the Bermuda Triangle.

The Ellen Austin
Manufactured in 1854 in Maine, the Ellen Austin was a large multi-masted American ship weighing over 1800 tons and 210 feet long. The ship used to travel between London and New York over the Bermuda Triangle zone in the Atlantic ocean. In December 1880 during one it's trips, the Ellen Austin met with another ship on the way to New York. The other ship was moving at good a speed.

The captain of the Ellen Austin sent some of his crew on board this ship. When the crew boarded the ship, there was not a single soul on board. The captain of Ellen Austin ordered the crew to guide the ship so that they could all sail together to New York. After two days, the two ships got separated by a huge sea storm. And when the storm subsided, the unnamed ship was gone and never seen again.

The Ellen Austin finally reached New York on February 11, 1881. It was an unusually long journey and indicates that a lot of time was spent in searching for the unnamed ship.

The mystery is not yet solved to date.

Joshua Slocum
After gaining widespread fame as the first person to sail solo around the globe, Joshua Slocum disappeared on a 1909 voyage from Martha’s Vineyard to South America. Many experts believe that the Bermuda Triangle is linked to his disapearance.

The USS Cyclops
On March 4, 1918, the USS Cyclops, a 542-foot-long Navy cargo ship with over 300 men and 10,000 tons of manganese ore onboard, went missing without a trace after departing the island of Barbados. The Cyclops never sent out an SOS distress call despite being equipped to do so, and an extensive search found no wreckage. In 1941 two of the Cyclops’ sister ships, Proteus and Nereus, were transporting heavy loads of metallic ore similar to that which was loaded on Cyclops during her fatal voyage. They similarly vanished without a trace along nearly the same route.

Carroll A. Deering
Built in 1919, Carroll A. Deering was one of the last large commercial sailing vessels. The ship was designed to carry cargo and had been in service for a year when it began its final voyage.

On August 26th, 1920, the Deering was bound for Rio, but the captain fell seriously ill and the Deering turned to drop off him and his first mate, who was also his son, off. The Deering Company recruited Captain Willis B. Wormell, a retired 66-year-old veteran sea captain and Charles B. McLellan to replace Merrit and his son.

The Deering set sail for Rio on September 8th, 1920. When the Deering arrived, Wormell gave his crew leave and met with Captain Goodwin, an old friend. Wormell complained about hsi crew, but said he did trust the engineer, Herbert Bates. The Deering left Rio on December 2nd, 1920, stopping for supplies in Barbados. First Mate McLellan got drunk and complained to Captain Hugh Norton about Wormell and that he had to do all the navigation due to Wormell's poor eyesight. Later Captain Norton, his first mate and another captain heard McLellan say, "I'll get the captain before we get to Norfolk, I will." McLellan was arrested, but on January 9th Wormell forgave him, bailed him out of jail, and set sail for Hampton Roads.

On January 28th, 1921, the Deerling hailed the Cape Lookout lightship off North Carolina. The lightship's keeper, Captain Jacobson, reported that a tall thin man with reddish hair and a foreign accent speaking through a megaphone told him the vessel had lost its anchors in a storm off Cape Fear and asked that the ship's owners be notified. The radio was out so Jacobson was unable to report it. Also the crew seemed to be "milling around" on the quarterdeck of the ship, which was usually not allowed. The following afternoon, the crew of another vessel spotted the Deering sailing a course that would take it directly onto the Diamond Shoals. No one was to be seen on the ship.

On January 31st, 1921, the Deering was sighted at Cape Hatteras. The vessel was hard aground with all sails set on the outer edge of Diamond Shoals. These shoals that extend offshore from Cape Hatteras, North Carolina are known as the"Graveyard of the Atlantic" and have been notorious as a common site of shipwrecks for centuries. Rescue ships were unable to approach the vessel due to the bad weatheruntil February 4th. The Deering had been battered by the surf for several days and had been completely abandoned. Her the wheel was shattered, the binnacle box stove in, and the rudder disengaged from its stock. The ship's log and navigation equipment were gone, along with the crew's personal effects and the ship's two lifeboats. In the vessel's galley it appeared that food was being prepared for the next day's meal at the time of the abandonment. The Deering was unsavagable and declared a hazard. It was destroyed using dynamite explosives on March 4th.

A portion of the ship's bow later drifted ashore on Ocracoke island. Wooden timbers from the wreck also washed ashore on Hatteras Island.

The U.S. government launched an extensive investigation into the disappearance of the crew. Herbert Hoover, then Secretary of Commerce, was intrigued by the fact that several other vessels of various nationalities had also disappeared in roughly the same area.

On April 11, 1921, a local fisherman named Christopher Columbus Gray claimed to have found a message in a bottle floating off Buxton Beach, North Carolina, but later admitted to forging the letter.

This along with rumors and more at the time indicated Deering was a victim of piracy, possibly connected with the illegal rum-running trade during Prohibition, and possibly involving another ship, Hewitt, which disappeared at roughly the same time. Just hours later, an unknown steamer sailed near the lightship along the track of Deering, and ignored all signals from the lightship. It is speculated that Hewitt may have been this mystery ship, and possibly involved in Deering's crew disappearance.

Even though Mutiny was accepted as the explanation for the Deering incident, the investigation was closed in late 1922 without an official finding.

Flight 19
At 2:10 p.m. on December 5th, 1945, five TBM Avenger torpedo bombers, took off from a Naval Air Station in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida as part of a routine training flight. These planes were known as Flight 19. The compasses apparently malfunctioned, the leader of the mission got severely lost. All five planes flew aimlessly until they ran low on fuel and were forced to ditch at sea. That same day, a rescue plane and its 13-man crew also disappeared. After a massive weeks-long search failed to turn up any evidence, the official Navy report declared that it was “as if they had flown to Mars.” No definitive signs of the aircrafts or their crewmen have ever been found.

Star Tiger and Star Ariel
Star Tiger disappeared on January 30, 1948, on a flight from the Azores to Bermuda; Star Ariel disappeared on January 17, 1949, on a flight from Bermuda to Kingston, Jamaica. Both were Avro Tudor IV passenger aircraft operated by British South American Airways. Neither aircraft gave out a distress call; in fact, their last messages were routine.

Don Bennett, who had been fired by BSAA in 1948 when he objected to a judicial investigation into the loss of the Star Tiger, later claimed that both the Star Tiger and Star Ariel had been sabotaged. He also said that "a known war-registered saboteur" had been seen near the Star Tiger shortly before its last takeoff. He also claimed that Prime Minister Clement Attlee had ordered all inquiries into the incidents to be abandoned.

Douglas DC-3
The Douglas DC-3 has been probably the most reliable aircraft ever designed and built. There were more than 10,000 DC-3 planes manufactured, and still hundreds remain in use. These are propeller driven aircraft and not jet planes. It is widely used as private charter planes by many airlines and also for spraying pest controls from the air, particularly mosquito killers.

On December 28, 1948, a Douglas DC-3 aircraft took off at 10:03 a.m. on a flight from San Juan, Puerto Rico, to Miami. With just 20 minutes to go, the aircraft sent the last message to indicate its position 50 miles south of Florida. The flight was never seen or heard of again. No trace of the aircraft, or the 32 people on board, was ever found. A Civil Aeronautics Board investigation found there was insufficient information available on which to determine probable cause of the disappearance.

Connemara IV
Connemara IV was a pleasure yacht that was found adrift and abandoned in the Atlantic south of Bermuda on September 26, 1955.

KC-135 Stratotankers
On August 28, 1963, a pair of US Air Force KC-135 Stratotanker aircraft collided and crashed into the Atlantic 300 miles west of Bermuda.

Scientists think they have solved the reason for these events that happened.

Craters were found, which are up to half a mile wide and 150 feet deep, believed to have been caused by build-ups of methane off the coast of natural gas-rich Norway. The Methane would have leaked from deposits of natural gas that created cavities below the surface, which create explosions. These explosions are a potential risk for vessels travelling on the ocean and this is what scientists believe caused some of accidents in the Bermuda Triangle.

What happened to the missing bodies though?

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