by Lionel
Other Bermuda Triangle mariners have reported disturbances in the sea itself so severe that a ship can suddenly be faced by an unpredictable wave the size of a house. The area is also notorious for waterspouts, when tornadoes wrench huge columns of water hundreds of metres up into the air. Those who’ve experienced these vast waterspouts have no doubt that they present a formidable challenge to ships of almost any size.
From causes that would gladden the heart of science fiction and fantasy enthusiasts at one end of the scale, to oceanographers’ and meteorologists’ scientific hypotheses and analytical records at the other, the Bermuda Triangle poses its sinister riddles as persistently as the legendary Sphinx once did. It is undeniable that a great many ships and aircraft have been lost there. How natural were their disappearances?
In addition to the unpredictable foul weather and electromagnetic anomalies in the Bermuda Triangle, there are still a few raiders and pirates around. They no longer favour cutlasses and pistols, or parrots and tri-corned hats, but their motives and modus operandi remain largely unchanged. At least some of the losses in the Bermuda Triangle can be explained as piracy.
Does the sea floor below the sinister triangle offer any theoretical answers to the riddle? Most of that sea floor is well over six thousand metres down and covered with fine sand. The U.S.’s neighbouring continental shelf, in comparison, has a depth of a mere thirty metres. The vast depth beyond the shallows of the continental shelf is exceeded significantly by the Puerto Rican Trench at the southern tip of the Bermuda Triangle, which has a depth of over nine thousand metres and is one of the deepest parts of the whole Atlantic Ocean. Historians speculate that it must almost certainly be the last resting place of many Spanish conquistadores and their treasure-filled galleons.
Another interesting piece of data is that longitude 80° passes through the Bermuda Triangle. Longitude 80° is particularly interesting because it is the agonic line where magnetic north and true north are the same. It is usually necessary for a navigator to allow for the variation between magnetic north as shown by the compass and true north. On the agonic line no such variation occurs.
Points on a ship’s compass.
This agonic line goes on over to the far side of the North Pole and proceeds through the Pacific to the east of Japan, where it is interesting to consider the area that Japanese and Filipino sailors refer to as “the Devil’s Sea.” As in the Bermuda Triangle, there seem to be statistically more disappearances there than in other areas. The problem the agonic line creates for navigators is that when you normally allow for a compass variation of as much as twenty degrees between true north and magnetic north and then there is no variation, even the most expert and experienced navigators can make mistakes.
Psychologists refer to this error-inducing mental factor as perseveration: the inadvertent persistence of a familiar and well-practised behaviour pattern that is no longer applicable. Try taking a newspaper paragraph and crossing out every letter e with a vertical stroke as fast as you can. Then, immediately, take another paragraph and cross out every letter o with a horizontal stroke. Individual responses differ, but we are all vulnerable to perseveration to a greater or lesser degree. The tendency to cross out an e or two with a vertical stroke will persist even though the new target and response is o with a horizontal stroke. When you’ve allowed for magnetic variations for weeks of sailing, it’s difficult not to go on doing it along the agonic line, which your ship has just reached.
This Devil’s Sea is also notorious for tsunamis. Similar to tidal waves, but much bigger and faster, these are huge water movements caused by earthquakes and similar disturbances on the seabed. Tsunamis have very long wavelengths. If they have plenty of room to spread out in wide-open water in mid ocean, they may be less than half a metre high and relatively innocuous. When they get closer to a continental shelf they change dramatically and can engulf entire islands.
There’s also the human error factor to consider when studying the individual tragedies of the numerous lost ships and planes in the Bermuda Triangle. Florida, Barbados, and Puerto Rico are popular sailing destinations. Some enthusiastic amateurs with insufficient experience, inadequate seamanship, and scant knowledge of the dangers sail blithely into the Bermuda Triangle in a vessel that isn’t big enough, seaworthy enough, or well enough equipped technically. Their chances of disappearing are significantly above the risk factors for experienced professionals in big, well-equipped, seaworthy ships.
While analyzing the mysteries of the two infamous triangles — one near Bermuda and the other near Japan — there is another notorious area, called the “Welsh Triangle,” that deserves to be considered. The base of this Welsh Triangle runs roughly from northeast to southwest, and includes Pembroke Dock — the town where we investigated the recent, well-authenticated sea serpent sightings. The apex of the Welsh Triangle is out in St. George’s Channel between Wales and Ireland.
Close examination of the geology of the landward side of the Welsh Triangle, which includes St. Bride’s Bay, shows a number of sea caves, some of them very large, and many of them interconnected, so forming a natural labyrinth occupying several levels. There is also considerable evidence in the area of the activities of our prehistoric ancestors, who were once working industriously in that location.
Welsh Triangle theorists cite the extraordinary reports that emerged from the Milford Haven district in 1977. Strange, chromium-coloured aerial objects were described by many local pupils in the Haverfordwest area. At the height of the phenomena, witnesses claimed to have seen a curious silver-coloured, egg-shaped craft land in a field. They also claimed to have seen unusually tall humanoids wearing what looked like shiny plastic overalls. There were more detailed versions of these reports that included an inspection of a subterranean nuclear shelter. Theories were advanced about Stack Rock, one of a chain of forts dating back to the 1860s that were originally built to protect west Wales from attacks by the forces of Napoleon III of France. With a garrison of 168 men and 23 formidable guns, the chain of forts that included the one on Stack Rock were designed to offer protection to one another and to pour continuous fire on any invading vessels. The main responsibility of the Stack Rock fort was to protect the Royal Naval Dockyard at Pembroke Dock.
During the 1977 Welsh Triangle crisis, several local residents began to suspect that Stack Rock and its historic fortress had somehow become a base for extraterrestrial beings, who were blamed for causing everything from car breakdowns to teleported bovines and exploding TV sets. There are many sensible and logical people living in the vicinity of Stack Rock who still have their suspicions about the place, and who also have vivid memories of the events of 1977. The Welsh Triangle offers a very different set of enigmas from those associated with the Bermuda Triangle and the Japanese Triangle — but the riddles of all three may yet prove to be connected, and all of them can chronicle inexplicable events from the past as well as relatively recent ones.
The tragic disappearances in the Bermuda Triangle certainly go back a lot further than is popularly imagined. Columbus allegedly reported odd compass behaviour in that location — but fifteenth-century ships’ compasses were hardly miracles of precise, sophisticated navigational technology. The USS Pickering vanished there in 1800. The British ship Bella was lost there in 1854 on her way from Rio de Janeiro to Jamaica, and another British vessel, a frigate named Atalanta, disappeared there in 1880. The Italian schooner Miramon was mysteriously lost in the Triangle in 1884. The USS Cyclops, a substantial collier, went missing there in 1918 with several hundred people aboard her. Although Cyclops was equipped with radio, she sent no distress signal before vanishing — unlike the ill-fated Japanese freighter Raifuku Maru, which vanished in 1925 but reportedly managed to send an SOS: “Danger like dagger now. Come quick.” Was a radio operator with language problems trying to signal the word “danger,” which actually came out as “dagger” because of a technical malfunction? Or did he see something that he could only describe as resembling a
dagger threatening the Raifuku Maru? The Cotopaxi also vanished without trace in 1925. In 1938 — with the advantages of calm weather and a cloudless sky — the steamer Anglo-Australian sent a traditional “All’s well” message before she sailed into the Triangle never to emerge again. The Sandra disappeared in 1950 under equally mysterious circumstances. The Marine Sulphur Queen left Beaumont in Texas in 1963 on her way to Norfolk, Virginia. After entering the Bermuda Triangle she was never heard from again. In the same year a fishing boat named Sno’Boy left Kingston, Jamaica, and vanished as suddenly, as mysteriously, and as completely as the Marine Sulphur Queen had done. In the seventies Ixtapa, Anita, Saba Bank, Sylvia L. Ossa, and King Cobra all vanished in that area. In the eighties, Sea Quest got off a last signal that her navigational kit wasn’t functioning properly and then vanished into oblivion, taking eleven people with her. The nineties saw the end of three good, stout ships: Mae Doris, Intrepid, and Genesis. That relatively long list of unsolved marine tragedies is scarcely the tip of the Bermuda Triangle’s sinister iceberg: there were many, many more. To say that five hundred ships were lost there would be a very cautious understatement.
On top of the scores of vanished ships, there are the unsolved mysteries of abandoned derelicts like the Mary Celeste. In 1840 — thirty-two years before the Mary Celeste sailed into legend — something sinister happened to the complement of the Rosalie, an elegant but sturdy little French vessel sailing towards Havana. She was found abandoned inside the fateful triangle. Something similarly odd happened to the captain and crew of the Freya, which left Cuba and was found with no one aboard her the day after she had sailed on October 3, 1902. The Gloria Colite left St. Vincent in good order and with a full complement in 1940. She was found derelict a few hundred miles south of Mobile, Alabama. Her people are still missing. The totally empty yacht Vagabond turned up on the edge of the Sargasso Sea in 1969 — none of her missing personnel were ever traced.
Moving from ships to aircraft, the best known of the Bermuda Triangle air tragedies is the fate of Flight 19. On the afternoon of December 5, 1945, five Grumman TBM Avengers took off from Fort Lauderdale in Florida on a run-of-the-mill training mission. They never returned. Wreckage discovered in 1992 was originally thought to be that of the five missing Avengers from Flight 19, but turned out not to be theirs after all. A big Martin Mariner seaplane set out to look for the five missing Avengers and also failed to return. Bermuda Triangle mystery enthusiasts like to argue that the Mariner fell victim to whatever strange paranormal or extraterrestrial interference may have destroyed the Avengers. There is evidence, however, that she exploded in mid-air. Witnesses on a ship, the Gaines Mills, in the area at the time the Mariner vanished, maintained that they saw a flash of light in the sky that could have been an exploding aircraft. The commander of the USS Solomons, an aircraft carrier taking part in the search for the five missing Avengers, confirmed what had been reported from the Gaines Mills. In his opinion, the seaplane had exploded in mid-air.
The controversy surrounding the loss of Flight 19 continues as fiercely as it reverberated throughout the 1940s. There are strong arguments among the researchers and investigators as to how experienced the aircrew were when they set off on that fatal training flight from the Naval Air Station at Fort Lauderdale in Florida. Lieutenant Charles C. Taylor was credited with long and unblemished flying and instructing experience according to most accounts. There were suspicions in other versions that he was drunk or badly hungover from heavy drinking the previous night. That seems extremely unlikely in view of Naval Air Station discipline in the 1940s. Although Flight 19 was acknowledged to be a training mission, it was very clearly advanced training, indicating that the aircrew concerned were knowledgeable and experienced men. Efficient and skilful pilots — like any other highly qualified professionals — regularly take part in training seminars and updates, as well as familiarization courses for new procedures or modifications to equipment and techniques. It is incorrect to assume that the title “training flight” implies that those taking part were not experienced flying experts.
Another mystery surrounds the purported conversations between Taylor, his accompanying pilots, and the Fort Lauderdale control tower. Just when Flight 19 should have been close to returning to base about an hour and forty-five minutes after takeoff, Taylor is alleged to have radioed in: “Cannot see land; we seem to be off course.” The tower then asked for their position and received the answer: “We cannot be sure where we are. Repeat: we cannot see land.” Further reports of Flight 19’s communications then included phrases such as: “We can’t find west. We can’t be sure of any directions. Everything is wrong. Everything looks strange — even the ocean.” It was very difficult to make anything clearly intelligible out of these alleged signals, as some reports suggest that several of the pilots were transmitting simultaneously.
There is evidence that the conversations actually took place between the men of Flight 19 and Lieutenant Robert Cox, the senior flight instructor at Fort Lauderdale in 1945. Cox overheard someone asking Captain Powers (one of the Flight 19 pilots) what his compass reading was. Powers replied: “I don’t know where we are. We must have got lost after that last turn.” Cox then signalled to Flight 19: “What’s the trouble?” and it was Taylor who answered: “Both my compasses are out. I’m trying to find Fort Lauderdale. I’m over broken land. I’m sure it’s the Florida Keys, but I don’t know how far down.”
It seems possible that Taylor and his men had mistaken Great Sale Cay in the Bahamas for the Florida Keys. The big question the lost pilots had to answer was whether they were on the Atlantic (eastern) side of Florida or over the Gulf of Mexico on the western side. With limited amounts of fuel, their lives depended on getting that answer right.
Whether we prefer the adventurous and imaginative explanations, ranging from UFOs to time travel via extra-dimensional gateways, or the prosaic, scientific, oceanographic and meteorological ones, the Bermuda Triangle remains an intriguing unsolved mystery of the sea.
Though not as mysterious as the Bermuda Triangle, the notorious Goodwin Sands, six miles out into the English Channel — just off Deal as you round the North Foreland — are roughly eighteen kilometres long and ten wide. The Goodwins are as mobile as piglets because of the strong winds and currents that beset them. Although semi-submerged and fatally dangerous in autumn and winter, a hot, dry, calm summer makes it possible to ride bikes and play cricket on the Goodwins at low tide.
It is no exaggeration to say that the Goodwins have probably destroyed more than one thousand ships over the centuries. The great storm of 1703 destroyed many vessels there, including the Stirling Castle, a very well built and seaworthy man-of-war. In 1954, the South Goodwin lightship sank with tragic loss of life. It was essential to use a lightship there because it was utterly impossible to find any firm foundation on which to build a lighthouse.
Co-author Lionel’s paternal grandmother, Eliza Ann Holmes Cuthbert, of King’s Lynn, Norfolk, U.K., was herself the daughter of Captain Cuthbert of King’s Lynn, who was master of a sloop of the kind known then as Billy Boys. Lloyd’s List of Shipping for April 15, 1859, records that a Billy Boy was discovered at daybreak on the Goodwins: her hull was underwater, and her crew were clinging desperately to the rigging. The valiantly unselfish crew of the Walmer lifeboat went out to save her, regardless of their own safety, as did volunteers on board a Deal registered lugger. Incredibly, despite awesome seas, one of the Billy Boy’s crew was saved, although two were lost, including the master.
Co-author Lionel’s great-grandfather, Captain Cuthbert, was also drowned when his Billy Boy sank at around the same period in the mid-nineteenth century. Life is full of curious coincidences.
Another unsolved mystery is the weird Sargasso Sea, named after the curious seaweed, called sargassum, that floats close to its surface. Mariners have known about it for a long time — certainly since the days of Columbus, who mistakenly regarded it as a sign that he wasn’t far from land. When he tried
to sound the depth, however, he was surprised to find that the Sargasso was “bottomless” — at least with the unsophisticated measuring gear at his disposal in the fifteenth century.
In broad terms, the Sargasso Sea can be located between 20° to 35° north and 30° to 70° west. Within that area there are very few marine currents, yet the Sargasso is at the centre of some of the fastest and most persistent streams known to oceanographers. The Gulf Stream goes around part of the Sargasso, and so do the following: the Caribbean, the North Equatorial, the Florida, the Canary, and the Antilles currents. The coming together of these powerful, grand-scale water movements seems to have an isolating effect on the Sargasso. Its own limited currents, such as are they are, are described by expert oceanographers as entropious — a specialist term derived from the better known and understood concept of entropy — roughly meaning “wasted energy,” or signifying “misdirected energy,” together with the degree of uncertainty and randomness within the energy system concerned.
As far as research into the Sargasso is concerned, the strong external currents and the internal entropious currents seem to create a very strange water trap: many things are induced to drift in — but very little ever drifts out again!
A disturbing and dangerous feature that the Sargasso shares with the Goodwins is its ability to move and shift around — slightly, but unpredictably. A model is always useful. Imagine spilling a bucket of fairly gooey, gelatinous seaweed into a bathtub full of water and then taking a large wooden spoon and stirring vigorously all around it, but not through it. The track of your spoon creates the powerful currents (miniatures of the Gulf Stream and the Antilles Current) surrounding and isolating your miniature Sargasso. Such disturbances as occur within the gooey seaweed are entropious. It also changes its position slightly relative to the bathtub — and within its own random boundaries. These changes are influenced to a major extent by the speed, power, and positioning of your wooden spoon.
