The Bermuda Triangle’s biggest remaining mysteries

For some, it’s the most feared stretch of water on the entire planet. 

The Bermuda Triangle, also known as the Devil’s Triangle, is a region in the North Atlantic Ocean that has long been shrouded in mystery.

According to legend, ships and airplanes have a tendency to go missing there, sparking theories of supernatural causes for these disappearances. 

For decades, commentators have speculated on the possibility of alien kidnappings, interdimensional portals, magnetic forces or even lost cities in the triangle. 

Dr Simon Boxall, an oceanographer at the University of Southampton, recently said that the disappearances can be explained by weather – and not to do with such far-fetched concepts.

However, there are still key unanswered questions surrounding the phenomenon, which attracts scientific interest along with wacky theories.

And they mean this section of the North Atlantic will continue to fascinate for many more years to come.  

Here are the Bermuda Triangle’s biggest remaining mysteries. 

MISSING WRECKAGE 

Theories surrounding the deadly pull of the Bermuda Triangle have spread widely ever since the disappearance of the USS Cyclops more than a century ago. 

The USS Cyclops was an American coal-carrying ship that was used to ferry fuel to warships during World War I.

In March 1918, the ship was passing through the Bermuda Triangle on its way from Salvador, in Brazil, to Baltimore when it vanished. 

Despite an extensive search, no trace of the 542-foot (165-metre) vessel or its 306 crew members has ever been found.

Some 27 years later, a squadron of bombers collectively known as Flight 19 disappeared in the airspace above the Bermuda Triangle. 

As with the Cyclops incident, no explanation was given and no wreckage was found – so what happened?

While the missing Cyclops wreck is indeed mysterious, Flight 19 comprised small aircraft which would have likely broken up on impact with the sea, according to Dr Boxall. 

‘Whilst there was a rescue mission no one really knew where they would have ditched with a huge search area to cover,’ he told the Daily Mail. 

Today, brave explorers are still diving into the area’s waters to visit some of the wrecks whose remains are accounted for. 

An example is SS Cotopaxi, a coal ship that vanished in 1925 on way from South Carolina to Cuba, which was finally located nearly a century later in 2020.  

SS Cotopaxi was depicted in Steven Spielberg’s 1977 blockbuster ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’, where it was found in the Gobi Dessert having supposedly been placed there by aliens.

But the fact that it was discovered five years ago just shows that not every vessel lost in the triangle vanishes without a trace. 

NUMBER OF LOST VESSELS

One of the biggest remaining mysteries is exactly how many vessels have perished in the triangle, which has Miami, Bermuda and Puerto Rico as its three points. 

Most sources claim 50 ships and 20 airplanes have disappeared in the region’s ocean and airspace, but the true figure could be much higher. 

National Geographic is among the sources that puts the number at ‘hundreds of ships’ – so not even counting airplanes. 

And because the region is not officially recognised or tracked by government agencies, any figure is unlikely to be substantiated or reliable.

MISSING DISTRESS CALLS

According to Encyclopedia Britannica, some vessels in the triangle transmitted no distress signals just before were never seen or heard from again, of which one is the USS Cyclops, which, as we know, didn’t leave any debris.

However, Dr Boxall suggests that ships were suddenly struck by ‘rogue waves’ – unpredictable walls of water reaching a towering height. 

If the USS Cyclops – or any of the other vanished vessels – were struck by rogue waves, it would explain why they sank before being able to make a distress call.

We already know that the Bermuda Triangle suffers from rough weather, but not necessarily rougher than anywhere else in the world.

In some cases, private boats have been lost in the triangle, but that may be because it is located in such a luxurious part of the world, popular with millionaires. 

Dr Boxall said: ‘Over one third of all registered leisure vessels in the USA are based in the Bermuda Triangle, and that includes the great lakes and inland waterways.

‘The 2019 US Coastguard Annual Report cites that 82 per cent of all incidents they responded to (including loss of vessels and lives at sea) could be put down to people either having no training, and/or no experience of being at sea.’ 

WHY DID THE VESSELS DISAPPEAR? 

The reason why each and every vessel foundered in not on record, but there’s the intriguing possibility several losses in the triangle are somehow linked.

Dr Boxall admits there are ‘a few anomalies in this region’, the first of which is the issue of gas hydrates – methane deposits resulting from rotting material on the sea floor. 

‘They waxy substances are solid at the high pressures of the sea floor,’ Dr Boxall told the Daily Mail. ‘Occasionally if the deep water warms, or if there is some from of submarine slide, [they are] released.

‘As they float to the surface the drop in pressure and the warmth turns them to liquid and eventually gas as they erupt at the surface. 

‘These occur in many parts of the world’s oceans and whilst the idea of a big gas bubble sinking a ship seems plausible, various experiments have shown that in reality the upthrust of the bubbles balances the tendency of the ship to sink.’ 

IS IT ALL A HOAX?

Few regions of the planet have divided opinion like the Bermuda Triangle, with many calling it a hoax and others claiming an enormous cover-up. 

According to most informed experts, the Bermuda Triangle does not have a high incidence of disappearances, at least relatively speaking.

‘The Bermuda Triangle isn’t particularly unusual in terms of vessels and aircraft disappearing in the ocean without trace,’ Dr Boxall told the Daily Mail.  

‘One could extend it to cover the globe and pick up disappearances and incidents on each expansion.’ 

Its reputation as a particularly dangerous place for vessels to cross may be simply exaggerated – greatly helped by US magazine coverage in the 1950s. 

‘The concept was introduced by George X Sand in 1952 in a magazine called Fate,’ the academic added.

‘The article was entitled ‘Sea Mystery at our backdoor’ and to give you an idea of the readership of Fate it included articles like ‘the truth about the flying saucers’, Invisible Beings Walk the Earth’ and ‘Twenty Million Maniacs’. 

‘Prior to this the concept didn’t exist.’  

Dr Boxall concluded that the Bermuda Triangle makes ‘a great tale’, but ultimately it can be explained rationally, without veering into pseudoscience.