Into the Abyss: Exploring the Secrets of the Bermuda Triangle
The Bermuda Triangle, also known as the Devil’s Triangle, has long been a subject of fascination and speculation due to its reputation for unexplained disappearances of ships and aircraft. This enigmatic stretch of ocean is roughly bounded by Miami, Bermuda, and Puerto Rico, covering an area of about 500,000 square miles.
The Triangle is most famous for its alleged ability to make things vanish. For centuries, more than 50 ships and 20 aircraft along with all of their passengers have disappeared in the large triangular area of the Atlantic Ocean.
Reports of disappearances in the Bermuda Triangle can be dated back to Christopher Columbus, with documented records of missing ships from as early as 1800. Despite this, we’re still no closer to any answers about why this particular stretch of open water is the location of many ship and aircraft disappearances.
Despite the allure of these mysteries, skeptics argue that the Bermuda Triangle’s reputation is largely inflated, pointing out that its reported disappearances are not significantly higher than in other heavily trafficked areas of the world’s oceans. Many incidents attributed to the Triangle can be explained by human error, equipment malfunction, or natural phenomena.
Nevertheless, the attraction of the Bermuda Triangle persists, captivating the imagination of people around the world and inspiring countless books, films, and documentaries. While the truth behind its mysteries may never be fully unraveled, the legend of the Bermuda Triangle continues to spark curiosity and speculation, reminding us of the enduring enticement of the unknown.
Hi everyone and welcome back to the dark historyqa podcast where we explore the darkest parts of human history. hope everyone is well I’m Rob your host as always. Welcome to season 3 episode 5, Into the Abyss: Exploring the Secrets of the Bermuda Triangle. I don’t know about you guys but in the 90’s seemingly every scary documentary or strange occurrence story had something to do with the Bermuda Triangle. This of course could just be me, I was still only a kid in the 90’s, but I can remember a lot of stuff being centred around it and the place has sort of always interested me. So today we will look into some of the stories of missing ghost ships and disappearing air craft.
So without further ado please turn off those lights sit back and relax next to the fire for more dark history.
Where to start? Well I think we may as well start with One of the earliest and most notable incidents linked to the Bermuda Triangle, the disappearance of flight 19 in 1945.
At 1410 hours on 5 December 1945, a group of five TBM Avenger torpedo bombers took off from the U.S. Naval Air Station, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, for a routine overwater navigational training flight. The flight leader in charge of the unit, dubbed “Flight 19,” was U.S. Navy Lieutenant Charles Carroll Taylor, who had amassed some 2,500 flying hours in addition to the completion of a combat tour in the Pacific Theater during World War II. Taylor and his crew of 13 airmen, some trainee pilots, were to execute “navigation problem No. 1,” a combination of bombing and navigation that other flights had completed or were scheduled to undertake that day.
The weather in the area to be covered by the training flight appeared fairly standard. Save for a few scattered showers, visibility, and wind speeds were considered to be normal for a training exercise of this nature. The beginning of the exercise was just that: normal. Taylor and his crew made it easily to Hen and Chickens Shoals, where bombs were dropped according to plan sometime around 1430. At 1500 hours, a recording shows that one of the student pilots in the flight requested and was permitted to drop his plane’s last bomb.
Flight 19 turned and began to make its way toward the second leg of its exercise, and things took a turn for the strange. A radio message was intercepted from the flight at around 1600 hours, recording a conversation likely between Taylor and the pilot of one of the other planes. On the recording, one of the student pilots was asked by a crewman for a compass reading, to which the pilot replied, “I don’t know where we are. We must have gotten lost after that last turn.” On the same recjording, Lieutenant Taylor can be heard saying, “Both my compasses are out, and I am trying to find Fort Lauderdale, Florida. I am over land, but it’s broken. I am sure I’m in the Keys, but I don’t know how far down and I don’t know how to get to Fort Lauderdale.” Soon after, one of the planes in the flight called in to the NAS Fort Lauderdale to report that they were lost. Operators at the NAS tried many suggestions, from switching radio frequencies to the search and rescue frequency, to imploring Taylor to turn on his YG or IFF transmitter so that his location could be triangulated. For whatever reason, these attempts were ignored by Taylor and the other pilots of Flight 19. In one of these recordings, a member of the flight can be heard exclaiming, “Dammit, if we could just fly west we would get home; head west, dammit.” Taylor ordered the flight east.
By this time, weather conditions in the area had deteriorated, and the sun had set. A handful of land-based radio stations were able to triangulate Flight 19’s position as being somewhere north of the Bahamas and significantly off the coast of Florida. Despite this knowledge, the flight’s location was not adequately reported to naval air traffic control personnel at NAS Fort Lauderdale. At 1820, the last message from Flight 19 was received. In this recording, Taylor was heard saying, “All planes close up tight … we’ll have to ditch unless landfall … when the first plane drops below 10 gallons, we all go down together.”
All 14 airmen involved in Flight 19 were never seen or heard from again. But these 14 men wouldn’t be the only men to vanish into thin air on 5 December 1945.
Knowing that the planes’ fuel would have run out at 2000 hours, a search and rescue effort was launched to locate the flight and its crew at around 1800 hours that evening, just before the last message was received. Surface vessels, both military and merchant, were notified of the disappearance and two consolidated PBM Mariner flying boats were diverted from their original training flights to participate in square pattern searches in an attempt to locate any trace of Flight 19. One of these planes, PBM-5 Bureau Number 59225, took off from NAS Banana River in Brevard County, Florida, at 1927 hours carrying a crew of 13 rescue personnel. The plane called in a routine message a few minutes later but disappeared off the radar entirely within around 20 minutes of takeoff. That night, a merchant ship off the coast of Fort Lauderdale reported seeing a “burst of flame” shortly before passing through an oil slick in the same vicinity the missing PBM had dropped off the radar.
At daybreak the following day, the Navy launched an even larger rescue effort, now having to search for a total of six downed aircraft. The efforts lasted around 5 days, during which 300,000 square miles were combed for any sign of the planes or the men working aboard them. Theories surrounding these disappearances are varied, ranging from alien abductions, to secret government experiments. The official account of the events of 5 December 1945 suggest that Lieutenant Taylor mistook his location, believing he was flying over the Florida Keys and the Gulf of Mexico. Armed with broken compasses, he was unable to determine his true location. Eventually, Taylor and his airmen ran out of fuel, forcing them to down their planes and succumb to the elements. The disappearance of the PBM-5 is most often attributed to an explosion, as this particular model of plane was prone to such accidents.
Whatever the case may be, not a single trace of them has been found.
It’s not only aircraft that have been lost many ships have disappeared in the area also, the first being the USS Pickering in 1800. The Pickering, which is widely regarded as the first recorded disappearance attributed to the Bermuda Triangle mystery, was a topsail schooner in the United States Revenue Cutter Service and then the United States Navy during the Quasi-War with France. She was named for Timothy Pickering, then the Secretary of State.
USRC Pickering was built at Newburyport, Massachusetts in 1798 for the Revenue Cutter Service. Captain Jonathan Chapman was her first commander. The ship was then Taken into the Navy in July at the outbreak of the Quasi-War, she departed Boston on her first cruise on 22 August 1798.
In 1799 and early 1800, she was part of Commodore Barry's squadron in the West Indies. Lieutenant Edward Preble commanded Pickering from January through June 1799, when he was promoted to captain and took command of the frigate Essex.
Pickering was permanently transferred to the Navy on 20 May and re-designated USS Pickering. Master Commandant Benjamin Hillar, U.S. Navy, assumed command in June, and continued command of the ship for its final years.
On her final voyage the Pickering departed from Boston on 10 June 1800. Ordered to join Commodore Thomas Truxton's squadron on the Guadaloupe Station in the West Indies, she sailed from New Castle, Delaware on 20 August, and was never heard from again. She and the 90 person strong crew on board is presumed to have been lost in a gale in September, but this was never proven. This storm is also thought to have sunk USS Insurgent, which likewise vanished without a trace. The exact cause of the cutter's disappearance remains a mystery.
Two more infamous occurrences of ship disappearances are the USS cyclops and the SS Cotopaxi.
The USS Cyclops was one of four collier cargo ships built for the United States Navy in 1910. Originally designed for bulk-carrying cargo such as coal, when the ship set off from Brazil in February 1918, it was carrying a payload that was far more dangerous.
Thought to be overloaded with cargo when it set sail for Baltimore, the USS Cyclops was weighed down with over 11,000 tonnes of manganese ore, despite only being designed to transport 8,100 tonnes. Less than a month later, the USS Cyclops and the 306 crew members had disappeared without a trace.
There have been multiple theories over the century since the ship went missing. While some speculate that the unstable payload could have been the cause of the ship's disappearance, others suspect that it was sunk by the Germans, who didn’t want the manganese arriving at its destination.
Some have commented on the sobriety of the ship’s captain, while others have discussed that the ship wasn’t in suitable condition to sail, let alone while overloaded. To date, no wreckage has ever been found.
The SS Cotopaxi was also a bulk shipping carrier. Built during WWI, the Cotopaxi had already had its fair share of near-misses by the time it disappeared in December 1925. From a grounding incident in Brazil to a collision in Havana, the Cotopaxi had considerable bad luck.
When it set off on its final voyage on 29th November 1925, it was laden with a cargo of coal destined for Havana. Just two days later, a distress signal was received from the crew stating that they were taking on water from a tropical storm.
It wasn’t until 95 years later, in 2020, that the fate of the SS Cotopaxi was revealed. Discovered just off the coast of St Augustine, Florida which is just outside the generally accepted borders of the Bermuda Triangle, the Cotopaxi was identified by marine biologist Michael Barnett after 15 years of intense investigation.
Another tale of strange disappearances was the story of The Carroll A. Deering. The American five-masted commercial schooner launched in 1919. She was found run aground without its crew off Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, in January 1921.
On July 19, 1920, the Deering sailed from Puerto Rico, and arrived at Newport News to pick up a cargo of coal for delivery to Rio de Janeiro. The ship was captained by William H. Merritt, a hero of World War I who had been cited for bravery under fire for saving his entire crew when his previous command, the Deering-built five-masted schooner Dorothy B. Barrett, was sunk by the Germansubmarine U-117 off Cape May, New Jersey in 1918.
On August 26, 1920, it had cleared the Virginia Capes. However, Captain Merritt fell seriously ill and the Deering turned back and landed in Lewis, Delaware. There Captain Merritt, along with his son who was to be the first mate, disembarked from the ship. G.G. Deering Company had to move quickly to find his replacement. There he was replaced by a retired veteran captain, Captain W.T. Wormell. Along with Wormell, Charles B. McLellan came aboard as the first mate.
Right away there were problems. Apparently, Wormell and McLellan despised each other as the ship set sail again. Being onboard a ship with close quarters didn't help the conflict between the two men. When the ship arrived in Rio, while his crew was on shore leave, Wormell met with another captain, and old friend Captain Goodwin, who was captaining another cargo vessel. While talking, Wormell spoke of his crew with disdain. However, he did believe he could trust his engineer, Herbert Bates, whom Goodwin knew. The Deering finally left Rio on December 2, 1920, with no cargo aboard.
Early in January 1921 as the ship made a stop in Barbados, Wormell commented to another captain, Captain Hugh Norton that McLellan, "He's habitually drunk while ashore. He treats the men brutally, totally uncalled for." Wormell was asked by another captain if he was worried about mutiny. Wormell didn't think all of the men would turn against him. However, both captains agreed it wouldn't take a whole crew to start a rebellion. To make matters worst, McLellan yelled at the captain just before arriving in Barbados , "I'll kill you before it's over, old man."
The conflict continued in Barbados while getting drunk at the Continential Café, McLellan was heard loudly saying, "I'll get the captain before we get to Norfolk, I will." His drunkenness and threats landed him in jail. Thinking that McLellan might have learned his lesson, Wormell bailed him out of jail.
Around January 9, 1921, they continued their voyage back to the United States. It appears as they made their way back the log entries on the ship's map were filled with Wormell's handwriting. And then things changed...It seems the handwriting was different, it had replaced the writing of Wormell. it continued its voyage up the coast toward North Carolina heading towards the Cape Lookout Shoals.
The ship was next sighted by the Cape Lookout lightship off North Carolina on January 28, 1921, when the Deering hailed it. The lightship's keeper, Captain Jacobson, reported that a tall thin man with reddish hair and a foreign accent speaking through a megaphone told him the vessel had lost its anchors in a storm off Cape Fear and asked that the ship's owners, the G.G. Deering Company, be notified. Jacobson took note of this, but his radio was out, so he was unable to report it. He also noticed that the crew seemed to be "milling around" on the quarterdeck of the ship, an area where they were usually not allowed. The following afternoon, the crew of another vessel transiting the area spotted the Deering sailing a course that would take it directly onto the Diamond Shoals. They, however, saw no one on the ship's decks and didn't attempt to hail the schooner, assuming her crew would spot the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse or the Diamond Shoals Lightship and change course to avoid wrecking on the shoals.
On January 31, 1921, the Deering was sighted at dawn by surfman C. P. Brady who was on lookout duty at the Coast Guard station at Cape Hatteras. The vessel was hard aground with all sails set on the outer edge of Diamond Shoals. These shoals that extend offshore from Cape Hatteras, North Carolina have been notorious as a common site of shipwrecks for centuries and are known as the "Graveyard of the Atlantic." Rescue ships were unable to approach the vessel owing to bad weather. The ship was not boarded until February 4, after being battered by the surf for several days, and it became clear that the schooner had been completely abandoned. Her steering equipment was found to be damaged, with the wheel shattered, the binnacle box stove in, and the rudder disengaged from its stock. The ship's log and navigation equipment were gone, along with the crew's personal effects and the ship's two lifeboats. In the vessel's galley it appeared that certain foodstuffs were being prepared for the next day's meal at the time of the abandonment. The Coast Guard cutter Manning attempted to salvage the Deering, but found this impossible. The vessel was declared a hazard to navigation, and was destroyed using dynamite on March 4 to prevent it from becoming a danger to other vessels.
The Bermuda Triangle is famous for its ship wrecks and aircraft disappearances but it isn’t just the old US naval ships or air craft that go missing, on the 22nd of December 1967 Miami hotel owner and yachtsman Dan Burack set out on his cabin cruiser Witchcraft with a priest named Patrick Horgan. The ship was taken one mile off the Miami coastline so that Burack and Horgan could view the Christmas lights visible from the shore. That night, Burack radioed a distress call to the Coast Guard, informing them that the boat's propeller had struck something underwater, and that the vessel would need to be towed in. The Coast Guard requested that he send up a flare in roughly 20 minutes so that the boat could be more easily located. The official who received the call reportedly later noted that Burack did not seem too concerned about the Witchcraft,a boat that Burack had fitted with a special floatation device in its hull. When the Coast Guard arrived at the location from which Burack called, he, Horgan, and the Witchcraft were nowhere to be found.Over the following days, a search was conducted over hundreds of square miles of ocean, but the boat and its passengers were never found.
Even more recently in late July 2015, two 14-year-old boys, Austin Stephanos, and Perry Cohen went on a fishing trip in their 19-foot boat. Despite a 15,000 square nautical mile wide search by the Coast Guard, the boys boat was found a year later off the coast of Bermuda, but the boys were never seen again.
Again in 2015 October the 1st to be exact, SS El Faro, with a crew of 33 aboard, sank off of the coast of the Bahamas within the triangle after sailing into Hurricane Joaquin. Search crews identified the vessel 15,000 feet below the surface.
Thank you for taking the time out of your day to listen to this dark episode. So the Bermuda Triangle, as I said at the start I was fascinated about this topic as a kid and believed the tales of aliens or sea monster, but as I’ve got older and the cynicism has grown I’ve realised all these stories of strange vanishings and mysterious occurrences can be rationally explained. For instance Christophe Columbus is actually one of the first Europeans to cross through I the Bermuda Triangle in 1492 and wouldn't you know it he almost immediately encounters a problem. the Santa Maria and her sister ships got stuck in an abundance of algae which in Columbus's diary he refers to as weeds. the ships were stuck for three days and the sailors become paranoid and panicked as they fear running aground or being Tangled in the weeds ultimately being dragged to the ocean floor. the crew would eventually manage to cut their way out but they remain convinced that this is a dangerous area all thanks to highly unusual seaweed. what Columbus and his men call weeds scientists eventually named sargassum from the Spanish word sargazo meaning seaweed the area ultimately becomes known as the Sargasso Sea. This sea weed when you get stuck in it wraps around the rudder so you can't steer, Barnacles begin to grow on the ship slowing it down, but getting stuck is just one small part of the problem, when sargassum groups together and begins to rot as it decomposes it produces hydrogen sulfide gas this gas smells terrible like rotten eggs and it's toxic if you breathe in. it can also irritate your eyes, your nose and your throat but it can also cause some serious psychological issues if inhaled for an extended period of time possibly even drive you to Insanity.
As I said in my last episode, sometimes history can be blown way out of proportion the media or just general word of mouth sometime contribute to this in a bid to make money or just generally make the story more interesting, then it become myth and legend and the. gospel truth. Flight 19 for instance is more likely human error than aliens beaming planes up, the cyclops, Pickering and cotopaxi probably went down in bad weather and the Deering probably had a mutiny, with the first mate and crew murdering the captain and getting the fuck out of dodge before they were hanged. I don’t think cathulu rose out the ocean and swallowed the ship whole or aliens came a took anyone. Let’s be honest if you were an alien and you could transcend space and time why in gods name would you come to earth were we can’t even decide if the earth round or flat, it would be like us sitting and watching an ant all day. Now don’t get me wrong some people do, do that and I’m not saying there are no aliens, I’m just say that the chance that all of the incidence in this one part of the world are due to aliens or massive sea monsters are slim to none.
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