| The Bermuda Triangle Essay, Research Paper
The Bermuda Triangle
On a bright, clear June day a plane, passing through what is
called the Bermuda Triangle, sends a SOS signal to the tower.
Suddenly, the radio contact suffers a break, the plane never makes
contact again. One can only imagine what happened to those people
aboard the aircraft, many may say that the disappearance concerned
UFO?s, while others say that it had to be a mistake. Yet, there appears
to be another explanation, they were victims of the ?Devil?s Triangle?.
?It was described as a place where ships sail off the end of the earth,
where planes climb up into the sky never to come down again, and
where sailors and airmen disappear forever.?(Winer xiii) Even though
this area consumes ships and planes ?at a rate of 40 to 50 a
year?(unknown 9), Ralph Stephen, a scientist at the Woods Hole
Oceanographic Institution insist that ?There?s absolutely nothing
scientific supporting the phenomenon[Bermuda Triangle]. There?s
nothing mysterious there? (unknown 9). If nothing were there, the
unexplainable could be explain and century old mysteries solve, yet no
reasonable explanation has come forth, therefore the Devil?s Triangle
lies waiting for its next victim.
The Bermuda Triangle/Devil?s Triangle covers about 1,140,000
sq. km (about 440,000 sq. mi.) between the island of Bermuda, the
coast of southern Florida, and Puerto Rico. Actually, ?The Devil?s
Triangle? is not a triangle at all. It is a trapezium, a four-sided area in
which no two sides or angles are the same. And the first four letters of
the word trapezium more than adequately describe it?(Winer 9). This
stretch of sea usually generates fair weather and good seafaring water
conditions, these conditions make it hard for some to understand why
so many ships and planes seem to disappear in this area.
The Bermuda Triangle has been around for many centuries.
Actually, it began way before America was named America, it began
with Christopher Columbus. ?It is mentioned in the great explorer?s
chronicle that the night before the history-changing discovery, he and
his crew saw what appeared to be a greenish glowing light that at
times would move about. Anthropologists theorize that what he saw
were cooking fires in fishing canoes of Carib Indians moving up and
down in the waves…But no matter what it was, Indians, illusions, or
UFO?s, that the mariners saw on that night in 1492 along the eastern
fringe of the Bahama Islands, strange and unusual things have been
happening in that area ever since? (Winer xiv). Two years after his
first trip to the new land Columbus set foot on America soil again. He
having sailed the ocean blue once before, noted the wind blowing from
the west. This happened to alert his inter-intelligence, for he warned
Bobadilla against setting sail for Spain. Needless to say Bobadilla
refused to take heed of the warning. From the crews of the five
surviving vessels out of twenty-seven ships that began their joinery
from Hispaniols to Spain, we learn what happened as they passed
through the ?Triangle?. ?Rain moved perpendicular to its proper
direction. Sails disintegrated. Masts snapped. Men screamed. Others
knelt down to pray…Then without warning the wind and rain were
gone. All was still but the sea. The sun burst through wind-driven
clouds. And half the fleet was gone? (Winer 26-7). The men thought
that they were in for safe sailing from there on out, they had no way of
knowing what was going to pounce on them like a mad, starving tiger.
?Again lightning flashed, but there was no sound of thunder. The
shrieking winds drowned it out. Paint was blasted from hulls…by the
driving rain? (Winer 27). Had their captain only listened to Columbus?
warning, he may have saved his men and himself the pain and
suffering that came next. ?Caravels smashed together and sank as
one. Those who open their eyes into the wind-driven rain had their
eyeball splattered out of the sockets…bodies were masses of torn
flesh…Mouths that opened to scream spewed forth blood instead of
words…Those dying prayed to live. Those living prayed to die? (Winer
27-8). Of the seventeen ship that were lost, no one has been able to
find any trace of them, therefore they are considered the first victims
of the ?Bermuda Triangle?.
Not only did the disappearances increase since Columbus? time,
they get harder to explain. There are many unexplained vanishing
associated with the ?Bermuda Triangle?, such as the case of Herbie
Pond. Herbie was a rumrunner in 1931, he was then considered one
of the best aviators, especially in the rumrunner industry. On a bright
sunny day Herbie landed in a pasture to rid himself of the booze he
was carrying. After he and the buyers were through with business he
checked the fuel and oil. ?As the three cars move off, Herbie revved
the engines, and the plane roared across the pasture and rose
smoothly into the air…toward the ocean, West End, another cargo of
whiskey, and the ?Devil?s Triangle.? That was the last ever seen of the
Curtiss Robin and Herbie Pond, [he is the] first known aviator to have
vanished in the ?Devil?s Triangle? (Winer 33). ?A navy Constellation
carrying forty-two persons including wives and children of service
personnel vanished northwest of Bermuda on October 30, 1954. More
than a hundred planes and ships searched for days, but no trace of the
big four-engine Connie or those who had been aboard it was found.
The navy could offer no explantion as to the disappearance? (Winer
39). A navy destroyer has set times to report in to the base, when the
time is missed the base radios the destroyer to confirm where-abouts.
One day a destroyer took off from its base , it kept up with its
report-ins perfectly. Then one report was missed, the base tried to
contact the destroy, but was unable to do so. A search party was send
out. After not finding anything, the search was called off. About two
days later a report came in from the missing ship, the exact report
that came in right before the ship disappeared forever. ?On the night
of Friday, November 9, 1956, a twin-engine navy P5M patrol bomber
roared skyward from Hamilton, Bermuda. The plane was…equipped
with a special magnetic anomaly detector. A radio message was
transmitted from the plane shortly after it was airborne. Nothing was
ever heard from the Martian P5M or the ten men abroad her? (Winer
39). Many of the lost vessels go unreported and many that are
reported to the coast guard seems to be kept in secrecy. The coast
guard responds to many calls of distress only to find an empty ocean
within the bounds of the Bermuda Triangle. ?On February 2, 1953, an
SOS was received from a British York transport plane carrying
thirty-three passengers and crew of six en route to Jamaica…Two
weeks of intensive searching revealed no clue as to the fate of the
plane or victims? (Winer 39). In the area of the ?triangle? more and
more planes and ships disappear each year. If there were nothing
mysterious out there then why are the above accounts mysteries
instead of solved cases. The subject of this area will be for many more
years on of the main topics of conversation in waterfront cafes and
casinos of the Caribbean.
What could be the cause of so many disappearances within the
triangle, what devours planes and ships and leaves no trace of
evidence? Over the years many theories have accumulated. ?Theories
about triangle abound. One of them is that gases leaking from the
ocean bottom cause explosions that cloud the surface and affect
low-flying aircraft. Another attributes the accidents to localized
?infrasound? wave that become magnified in a storm and tear ships
and planes apart. But Berlitz advances a more provocative
explanation. He thinks there may be a 400-foot-tall pyramid on the
ocean floor that releases electromagnetic forces so powerful they can
cause ?the disintegration of people and vechicle? (unknown 9) Another
theory concerning the ?Bermuda Triangle? consist of vortexes and
whirlpools, ?it is a giant vortex or whirlpool that originates from a hole
in the floor of the ocean..maybe caused by the cooling of the earth?s
interior. When it reaches the surface, it pulls in all of the surrounding
air. It can pull in airplanes flying as high as ten thousand feet. It pulls
down big ships and anything that floats leaving no trace? (Winer 206)
The followers of the deceased Edgar Cayce believe that the lost city of
Atlantis is located well within the boundaries of the Bermuda Triangle.
Perhaps magnetism or some type of magnetic circumstance could be
related to the Bermuda Triangle. Norman Slater believes the victims
have become entrapped in a time machine situation, a sort of a funnel
that can hold articles in an invisible dimension for periods before
unexpectedly releasing them again. ??Time is not a simple constant
flowing quantity that we assume it to be. It may sometimes release
these ships and planes from the other dimension in which they are
suspended, and they will return to the space from which they
vanished. I don?t want to be there when it happens,? says Slater. If It
will be horrible, for the crews will be skeletons.? (Winer 199) If
nothing unusual was present in this area known the world over as the
?Devil?s Triangle? or the Bermuda Triangle, then why would there be so
many theories about what makes the ships and planes disappear into
the deep blue yonder. Whatever claims the lives of so many each
year, there appears to be something present. ?There exist another
area where mysterious disappearances of ships, planes, and yachts
occur even more often than in the ?Devil?s Triangle? (Winer 210). This
place is located on the other side of the world, ?If one were to bore
almost straight through the center of the earth from a point near the
center of the ?Devil?s Triangle,? he would
come out in an area off the east coast of Japan…the ?Devil?s Sea?
(Winer 210). There were so many unexplained losses of ships and
planes in this so-called ?Devil?s Sea?, that the Japanese government
became concerned and sent out a massive research vessel to perceive
what was happening. It must have made its discovery, because the it
was never seen or heard from again. Not only the lost ships and planes
tie the Bermuda Triangle and the ?Devil?s Sea? together. ?It is a
parallelism that, although coincidental, is more than
circumstantial…you will remember that the compass does not point to
the true North Pole but rather to the magnetic North pole? (Winer
211). Depending on were on was located would cause a different
amount of variation. ?However, there are two longitudinal or meridian
areas where compass variation does not exist…One of these places is
off the east coast of Florida. The other is off the east coast of Japan.
So both the western extremity of the ?Devil?s Triangle? and the
western extremity of the ?Devil?s Sea? are the only two meridians
where the compass actually points to the true north.
What happens to those who disappear in to the Bermuda
Triangle, do they live or die, do they understand what has happened?
One man survived to tell his tell of the ?Triangle?, This man was Bill
Verity told someone that on his voyage from Fort Lauderdale to Ireland
in a twelve-foot plywood sloop, the hardest part was being trapped by
a lightning bombardment. It occurred in the ?triangle.? He informed
the listener. He said that he had never seen such lightning.
?Lightning bolt after lightning bolt striking the water. All hell had
broken loose? (Winer 201). Of course, no one knows for sure or will
?Until the sea spews forth the secrets of the ?Devil?s Triangle,? there
will always be self-proclaimed seers and sensationalists capitalizing on
the sea?s greatest mystery. Some will attribute the enigma to UFO?s,
others will blame Martians, and a few will pick up where Edgar Cayce
left off and accuse Atlanteans who periodically emerge from the
deepest trenches of the sea in their highly sophisticated hydrospace
conveyance and abduct less intelligent, inferior earthbound human
beings? (Winer 200-1).
?Human error,… weather phenomena,…or whatever else might
be causing ships, planes, and yachts to vanish in the ?Devil?s Triangle?
will continue to occur. It is quite possible that at this very minute
some unfortunate aviator or mariner is out there fighting for his life as
he discovers one of the secrets of the ?Devil?s Triangle? (Winer 213).
When professionals, including scientist, the navy and philosophers all
venture forth into what may be a death trap, a place of uncertainty to
try to discover or uncover a haunting mystery, that means that
something is there. Ralph Stephen stated only his unexplored opinion
when he said ?there?s nothing mysterious there.? The Bermuda
Triangle exists, there is mounting amounts of evidence and a growing
abundance of theories, ranging from hypoteadical to extensively
researched. In the future we may find out what secrets the Bermuda
Triangle really holds and someday be able to explain how, why, and
what happens in the ?Devil?s Triangle,? or perhaps one of us may
venture forth into the ?Triangle? and learn its secrets for ourselves,
never to reveal them to the world.
Winer,Richard. ?Devil?s Triangle.?
New York: Bantan Books, 1974:xiii-41,182-213
Unknown. ?Bermuda Triangle: Fact and Fiction.?
Newsweek 18 July 1983:9
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