Disproving Myths In the Bermuda Triangle

                When you hear the Bermuda Triangle, most people’s minds immediately jump to some new-age sci-fi/horror story with stories of supernatural occurences and death. However this myth was started by several writers in the early 20^th century. They wrote falsified accounts of shipwreck and plane crashes to promote sales of their books about the supernatural happenings of this area. But, I can honestly say there is nothing supernatural about the Bermuda Triangle. All the logical answers have been found to disprove these theories, but they are still more widespread than the truth.

            One of the earliest stories of something unnatural happening in the Bermuda Triangle is the ship Mary Celeste. This ship was a small American ship transporting alcohol to Europe, when it was discovered on Friday December 13^th, 1872 off the coast of Portugal, which is nowhere close to the Bermuda Triangle. It was completely abandoned of all crew, who were never heard from again. They had left behind anything they would’ve needed to survive on the lifeboat except a compass and sextant. There was no trace of anyone and it appeared as though they all just got up and left.

There are several theories to this mystery however, ranging from the absurd to the reasonable. Some say it was aliens, or the devil, others prefer that some of their cargo had a mini explosion in the hold and scared them all into abandoning ship. The cargo was 1700 barrels of raw alcohol, 9 of which were empty. Dr. Andrea Salla, a chemistry professor at the Univeristy College London recreated the Mary Celeste in 2006 and demonstrated the alcohol explosion theory. It resulted in a huge wave of fire but no soot or ash left behind. This is the most reasonable explanation besides mutiny, which is easily ruled out.

            In 1918, the USS Cyclops disappeared on its way to Maryland from Salvador; there was never a trace of the ship or crew found. All 306 crew and passengers were lost, making it the single largest loss of life for the U.S. Navy not related to combat. This is easily explainable, more than likely they suffered some kind of structural problem, capsized, or hit one of the many fields of methane hydrates which can cause entire ships to sink instantly. This ship type usually ended up being rapidly sinking anyways and since it was 1918 there was no distress call because the wireless communications weren’t reliable yet.

            The most famous Bermuda Triangle incident is that of Flight 19. Flight 19 was the name of a practice flight involving practice bombing runs and a triangular course over the Bermuda Triangle. They disappeared on December 5^th, 1945 because of a faulty compass and a stubborn commander. Lieutenant Charles Taylor was the leader of the training exercise, it was his job to lead his men and show them the correct way to do things. However, because of his errors his entire squad was lost.

Shortly after takeoff he radioed in that his compass was broken, but he believed he was over the Keys. He changed his course and had his group go north, which was a fatal mistake. The further north they flew the further out in the Atlantic they got, He continued on his North-East until his planes ran out of gas and crashed in the Atlantic. The 5 planes they were flying, Avengers, were actually nicknamed “Iron Birds” because of their weight. Most people think that they quickly sank to the bottom upon crashing.

            These incidents were believed to be supernatural because people couldn’t understand everything and just blamed it on the Bermuda Triangle because it was aeasier than discovering the facts and making a logical conclusion. Hopefully you’ve learned from this and can educate people on the Bermuda Triangle!