Bermuda Triangle Essay, Research Paper
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.
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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