The Bermuda Triangle, also called the Devil's Triangle, is an area in the North Atlantic Ocean that is not clearly defined. It is roughly shaped by the locations of Florida, Bermuda, and Puerto Rico. Since the middle of the 20th century, a popular story has claimed that many planes, ships, and people have disappeared there in unexplained ways. However, studies by trusted organizations, such as the U.S. government and scientific groups, have found no proof of unusual events. These groups explain the incidents as results of natural events, mistakes made by people, and misunderstandings.
Origins
Although the nearby Sargasso Sea was already known as a mysterious place where ships might get lost, the first reports about strange disappearances near Bermuda appeared in an article written by Edward Van Winkle Jones for the Miami Herald. This article was shared by the Associated Press and appeared in many American newspapers on September 17, 1950.
Two years later, the magazine Fate published an article titled "Sea Mystery at Our Back Door" by George X. Sand. This was the first time the familiar triangular area where disappearances occurred was described. Sand mentioned several missing planes and ships since World War II, including the Sandra, a ship; Flight 19, a group of five US Navy torpedo bombers that disappeared in December 1945; the Star Tiger, a British South American Airways passenger plane that vanished in January 1948; a fishing boat with three men, including jockey Albert Snider, that disappeared in March 1948; an Airborne Transport DC-3 flight that went missing in December 1948 while traveling from Puerto Rico to Miami; and the Star Ariel, another British South American Airways passenger plane that disappeared in January 1949.
Flight 19 was discussed again in the April 1962 issue of The American Legion Magazine. The author, Allan W. Eckert, wrote that the flight leader had said, "We cannot be sure of any direction… everything is wrong… strange… the ocean doesn't look as it should." In February 1964, Vincent Gaddis wrote an article titled "The Deadly Bermuda Triangle" in Argosy, stating that Flight 19 and other disappearances were part of a pattern of unusual events in the area dating back to at least 1840. The next year, Gaddis expanded this article into a book called Invisible Horizons.
Other writers later expanded on Gaddis' ideas, including John Wallace Spencer (Limbo of the Lost, 1969, reprinted 1973); Charles Berlitz (The Bermuda Triangle, 1974); and Richard Winer (The Devil's Triangle, 1974). Some of these authors included descriptions of supernatural events.
Triangle area
Sand's article in Fate described the area as "a watery triangle bounded roughly by Florida, Bermuda, and Puerto Rico." The Argosy article by Gaddis explained the boundaries more clearly, with the corners at Miami, San Juan, and Bermuda. Later writers sometimes used different definitions. Some described different boundaries and corners, leading to areas ranging from 1.3 to 3.9 million km² (0.50 to 1.51 million square miles). In some cases, the triangle's edges were stretched as far as the coast of Ireland. As a result, whether an accident is considered inside the triangle depends on which writer described it.
Criticism of the concept
Larry Kusche, the author of The Bermuda Triangle Mystery: Solved (1975), said that many stories about the Bermuda Triangle written by others, including Gaddis, were exaggerated or not true. His research found mistakes in Berlitz’s accounts compared to what people who were involved in the events said. For example, Berlitz claimed that a sailor named Donald Crowhurst disappeared in the Triangle, but there was clear evidence that he was not lost. Another mistake was about a ship Berlitz said was lost in the Atlantic Ocean three days after leaving a port, but it was actually lost three days after leaving a port with the same name in the Pacific Ocean. Kusche also found that many incidents linked to the Triangle actually happened outside of it. His research often involved checking old newspapers from the time of the events to find reports about things like unusual weather that were not mentioned in the stories about disappearances.
In 1992, a British television program called The Bermuda Triangle, produced by John Simmons of Geofilms for the Equinox series, asked Lloyd’s of London, a major marine insurance company, if more ships sank in the Bermuda Triangle than in other areas. Lloyd’s said that no, the number of ships that sank there was not unusually high. They also said they do not charge higher insurance rates for ships passing through the Triangle. The U.S. Coast Guard confirmed this, noting that the number of supposed disappearances is very small compared to how many ships and planes pass through the area regularly.
The U.S. Coast Guard also does not believe in the Triangle’s mystery. They have collected and published documents that contradict many stories written about the Triangle. For example, in 1972, a ship called the V. A. Fogg sank off the coast of Texas, far from the Triangle. One story about the ship said that all the bodies disappeared except the captain, who was found sitting in his cabin with a coffee cup. However, the Coast Guard found the wreck and recovered several bodies.
A television program called Nova/Horizon aired an episode titled “The Case of the Bermuda Triangle” in 1976. The episode said that when researchers looked at the original sources or people who were involved in the events, the mystery disappeared. It also said that science does not need to explain the Triangle because the questions about it are not valid. Ships and planes behave the same way in the Triangle as they do everywhere else in the world.
Skeptical researchers, such as Ernest Taves and Barry Singer, have said that stories about mysteries and the paranormal are popular and profitable. This has led to many books, TV shows, and other media about the Bermuda Triangle. They found that some of these materials are misleading or inaccurate, but they continue to be sold. These researchers believe that the market favors stories that support the Triangle mystery and does not support well-researched, skeptical viewpoints.
In 2013, the World Wide Fund for Nature identified the world’s 10 most dangerous waters for shipping. The Bermuda Triangle was not among them.
Benjamin Radford, an author and scientific paranormal investigator, said in an interview that it is very hard to find an aircraft lost at sea because the search area is so large. He said that even if a disappearance seems mysterious, it does not mean it is paranormal or unexplainable. He also said that the mystery around the Triangle was created by people who did not double-check the facts.
NOAA, a U.S. government agency, says that most disappearances in the Bermuda Triangle are caused by natural factors like hurricanes, sudden weather changes from the Gulf Stream, and dangerous shallow waters. The U.S. Navy says that supernatural explanations are not true and that accidents are usually caused by natural events or human mistakes. The U.S. Board on Geographic Names does not list the Bermuda Triangle as an official location because there is no evidence that it is different from other ocean areas.
In the 2010s and 2020s, scientists and researchers repeated that the Bermuda Triangle does not have a higher rate of disappearances than other busy ocean areas. Karl Kruszelnicki, an Australian scientist, said in 2017 that the “mystery” can be explained by human error, unpredictable weather, and the large number of ships and planes that pass through the area. He said that the number of accidents in the Bermuda Triangle is the same as in other parts of the world.
Hypothetical explanation attempts
People who believe the Bermuda Triangle is a real place have suggested many possible reasons for the disappearances and strange events there. Some writers have used ideas from the supernatural, such as the mythical lost city of Atlantis. The Bimini Road, a rock formation near Bimini in the Bahamas, is sometimes linked to Atlantis. Some people think the Bimini Road is evidence of Atlantis, but scientists say it is a natural formation.
Another idea is that a parallel universe exists in the Triangle, causing a time or space distortion that pulls objects into another world. Others believe that unidentified flying objects (UFOs) are involved. Charles Berlitz, a writer who studied strange events, listed several theories about the Triangle, including forces that are not fully understood.
Compass problems are often mentioned in stories about the Triangle. Some people think unusual magnetic effects might exist there, but no such effects have been found. Compasses naturally point to magnetic north, which is slightly different from true north. In some places, like parts of the United States, magnetic and true north align, but this is rare. People who do not know this might think compasses behave strangely in the Triangle, but this is a normal part of how compasses work.
The Gulf Stream is a powerful ocean current that flows from the Gulf of Mexico into the Atlantic Ocean. It moves like a river within the ocean and can carry floating objects. A plane or boat that is in trouble could be carried far from where it was last seen by this current.
One of the most common explanations for missing planes or ships is human error. For example, businessman Harvey Conover may have lost his yacht, Revonoc, in 1958 because he sailed directly into a storm near Florida.
Hurricanes are strong storms that form in warm ocean waters and have caused many deaths and damages. The first recorded hurricane was in 1502, when a Spanish fleet sank. Many hurricanes pass through the Triangle as they move toward the eastern coast of the United States. Before satellites, ships had little warning of approaching hurricanes.
A sudden burst of cold air may have caused the sinking of the Pride of Baltimore in 1986. The crew reported a sudden increase in wind speed, from 20 mph to 60–90 mph. A weather expert said that during unstable weather, a powerful rush of cold air from above can hit the ocean surface like a sudden explosion.
Some scientists think that methane hydrates, a type of natural gas found on the ocean floor, might explain some disappearances. Experiments showed that bubbles from methane could reduce water density enough to sink a ship. If methane gas suddenly rises from the ocean floor, it could create areas of frothy water that make it hard for ships to stay afloat.
The United States Geological Survey (USGS) has found large amounts of methane hydrates under the ocean, including near the southeastern U.S. However, the USGS says no major releases of methane gas have occurred in the Bermuda Triangle in the past 15,000 years.
Notable incidents
The sail training ship HMS Atalanta (originally named HMS Juno) disappeared with all of her crew after departing the Royal Naval Dockyard, Bermuda, for Falmouth, England, on 31 January 1880. It was believed that she sank during a powerful storm that crossed her route a few weeks later. The crew, mostly inexperienced trainees, may have contributed to the disaster. The search for evidence of her fate drew worldwide attention. This event is sometimes linked to the 1878 loss of the training ship HMS Eurydice, which sank after leaving the Royal Naval Dockyard, Bermuda, for Portsmouth on 6 March. Decades later, some claimed the Atalanta was a victim of the Bermuda Triangle, but this was later disproven by research from author David Francis Raine in 1997.
The incident that caused the largest loss of life in the history of the US Navy, not related to combat, occurred when the collier Cyclops, carrying manganese ore and with one engine out of action, disappeared without a trace with a crew of 306 sometime after 4 March 1918. The ship left Barbados. No strong evidence supports any single theory about the cause of the loss, but many theories exist, including storms, capsizing, or wartime enemy activity. Two of the Cyclops’s sister ships, Proteus and Nereus, were later lost in the North Atlantic during World War II. Both were transporting heavy metallic ore similar to that on the Cyclops. In all three cases, structural failure caused by overloading with a much denser cargo than the ships were designed for is considered the most likely cause of sinking.
Carroll A. Deering, a five-masted schooner built in 1919, was found abandoned and run aground at Diamond Shoals, near Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, on 31 January 1921. An FBI investigation into the Deering examined and dismissed multiple theories about the ship’s abandonment, including piracy, Communist sabotage, and involvement by rum-runners.
Flight 19 was a training flight of five TBM Avenger torpedo bombers that disappeared on 5 December 1945 while flying over the Atlantic. The squadron’s flight plan was to fly east from Fort Lauderdale for 141 miles, then north for 73 miles, and return west for 140 miles to complete the exercise. The flight never returned to base. Navy investigators attributed the disappearance to a navigational error that caused the aircraft to run out of fuel.
One of the search and rescue aircraft deployed to find Flight 19, a PBM Mariner with a 13-person crew, also disappeared. A tanker near Florida reported seeing an explosion and an oil slick while searching for survivors. The weather worsened as the incident continued. According to reports from the time, the Mariner had a history of explosions caused by fuel vapors when carrying large amounts of fuel, which might have been the case for a long search-and-rescue mission.
G-AHNP Star Tiger disappeared on 30 January 1948 during a flight from the Azores to Bermuda. G-AGRE Star Ariel disappeared on 17 January 1949 during a flight from Bermuda to Kingston, Jamaica. Both were Avro Tudor IV passenger aircraft operated by British South American Airways. Both planes were flying near the edge of their range, and even small errors or equipment faults could have prevented them from reaching their destinations.
On 28 December 1948, a Douglas DC-3 aircraft, number NC16002, disappeared during a flight from San Juan, Puerto Rico, to Miami. No trace of the aircraft or the 32 people on board was ever found. A Civil Aeronautics Board investigation concluded there was not enough information to determine the cause of the disappearance.
A pleasure yacht was found drifting in the Atlantic south of Bermuda on 26 September 1955. Stories often claim the crew vanished while the yacht survived three hurricanes. The 1955 Atlantic hurricane season shows Hurricane Ione passed near Bermuda between 14 and 18 September, with near-gale-force winds. In his second book on the Bermuda Triangle, Winer quoted a letter from Mr. J.E. Challenor of Barbados:
On the morning of September 22, the yacht Connemara IV was anchored with strong mooring ropes in Carlisle Bay due to an approaching hurricane. The owner reinforced the ropes and added two extra anchors. He had little else to do, as the exposed mooring was the only available anchorage. In Carlisle Bay, the sea after Hurricane Janet was dangerous. The owner of Connemara IV observed that the yacht had disappeared. An investigation found the yacht had dragged its moorings and drifted to sea.
On 28 August 1963, two US Air Force KC-135 Stratotanker aircraft collided and crashed into the Atlantic 300 miles west of Bermuda. Some writers claim the two aircraft had two separate crash sites, over 160 miles apart. However, Kusche’s research showed the unclassified Air Force report revealed the second "crash site" was actually a mass of seaweed and driftwood tangled in an old buoy, examined by a search and rescue ship.