Article by Puja Mahanta, The North-Eastern Chronicle
Visuals by: Anupal Deuri Bharali
Bewitchingly beautiful Bermuda, also known as devil’s triangle is a mythical section of the Atlantic Ocean where storms from multiple directions converge and make rogue waves.
The area covers approximately 500,000 square miles bounded by Miami, Bermuda and Puerto Rico where dozens of ships and aeroplanes have disappeared with surrounded unexplained circumstances.
Legend of Bermuda triangle:
Although, some writers gave multiple boundaries and pinnacles to the triangle. By all means, the region has a vaguely triangular shape that does not appear on any world map. The U.S. Board on Geographic Names does not recognize the Bermuda Triangle as an official region of the Atlantic Ocean.
Always been a mysterious place to humans, it can be a very deadly place with foul weather or poor navigation involved. In fact, people navigate the area every day without incident.
Why all the attention?
Known as the Devil’s Triangle, Limbo of the Lost, the Twilight Zone, and Hoodoo Sea, the Atlantic Ocean’s mythical Bermuda Triangle has captured the human imagination with the inexplicable vanishing of ships, planes, and people for decades. The origin of the Triangle myth started with Columbus, who noted in his logbook a haywire compass, strange lights, and a burst of flame falling into the sea.
Ancient tales of the sailboats stranded forever in a windless expanse of water, encircled by seaweed and infelicitous vessels. The mystical reputation of the island was immortalized in Shakespeare’s The Tempest, a tale of shipwreck and sorcery in “the still-vexed Bermoothes.” Many paranormal writers have explained the triangle as lethal, due to belief in the presence of aliens, Atlantis, sea monsters, time warps and reverse gravity fields. But humans are more likely to remember things that seem exceptional.
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Facts and theories of the triangle:
The term “Bermuda Triangle” was first termed in 1964 by writer Vincent Gaddis and many theories have been offered to explain the mystery over the years. Environmental considerations can explain mostly the disappearances as the majority of Atlantic tropical storms and hurricanes pass through the Bermuda Triangle and these dangerous storms claimed many ships.
Also, the Gulf Stream can cause rapid, sometimes dangerous changes in weather. Some scientists have suggested due to massive bubbles released from undersea methane deposits, the ship sinkings in the Bermuda Triangle could be a reason too. The seafloor in the region is known to contain large pockets of gas that could be released suddenly and turning the ocean into a frothy soup that swallows ships.
As Vice reports, British researchers used lab and computer models to simulate the effects of rogue waves more than 100 feet tall on ships as part of an investigation into the Bermuda Triangle. “Ships that were sufficiently long could get caught suspended between two wave peaks with nothing supporting them from below and snap in half” one researcher theorizes.
Accidents occurred in the Bermuda triangle:
(i) 1945: December 5, Flight 19 lost with 14 airmen, and later the same day PBM Mariner BuNo 59225 lost with 13 airmen while searching for Flight 19.
(ii) 1947: July 3, a Douglas C-54 crashed off the Florida coast after the pilot lost control in turbulence.
(iii) 1948: January 30, Avro Tudor G-AHNP Star Tiger lost with six crew and 27 passengers, en route from Santa Maria Airport in the Azores to Kindley Field, Bermuda.
(iv) 1956: November 9, Martin Marlin lost ten crewmen taking off from Bermuda.
(v) 2007: April 10, A Piper PA-46-310P disappeared near Berry Island after flying into a level 6 thunderstorm and losing altitude. Two fatalities were listed.
(vi) 2017: February 23, The Turkish Airlines flight TK183 (an Airbus A330-200) was forced to change its direction from Havana, Cuba to Washington Dulles airport after some mechanical and electrical problems occurred over the triangle.
(vii) 2017: On May 15, A private MU-2B aircraft was at 24,000 feet when it vanished from radar and radio contact with air traffic controllers in Miami.
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Be it psychological or otherwise, it’s worth remembering that there’s never been any actual evidence that the region is any more dangerous than ultimately responsible for the legend of the Bermuda Triangle. Whether fact or fiction, the Bermuda Triangle is a topic of local lore that won’t disappear anytime soon.
But don’t let the legend scare you cause the Triangle isn’t the only thing that makes this island seem magical. There is no evidence that mysterious disappearances occur with any greater frequency in the Bermuda Triangle than in any other large, well-travelled area of the ocean.
