Bermuda Triangle

The U.S. Navy and U.S. Coast Guard contend that there are no supernatural explanations for disasters at sea.  Their experience suggests that the combined forces of nature and human fallibility outdo even the most incredulous science fiction. They add that no official maps exist that delineate the boundaries of the Bermuda Triangle. The U. S. Board of Geographic Names does not recognize the Bermuda Triangle as an official name and does not maintain an official file on the area.

The ocean has always been a mysterious place to humans, and when foul weather or poor navigation is involved, it can be a very deadly place.  This is true all over the world.  There is no evidence that mysterious disappearances occur with any greater frequency in the Bermuda Triangle than in any other large, well-traveled area of the ocean.

Aircraft incidents:

Incidents at sea

1800: USS Pickering, on course from Guadeloupe to Delaware, lost with 91 people on board. (Possibly lost in a gale)

1814: USS Wasp, last known position was the Caribbean, lost with 140 people on board. (Possibly lost in a storm)

1824: USS Wild Cat, on course from Cuba to Tompkins Island, lost with 14 people on board. (Lost in a gale with 31 on board)

1840: Rosalie, found abandoned. (Possibly the "Rossini" found derelict)

1881: According to legend, a sailing ship, the Ellen Austin, found a derelict vessel and placed a crew to sail the vessel to port. Two versions of what happened to the vessel are: the vessel was either lost in a storm or was found again without a crew. Lawrence David Kusche author of "The Bermuda Triangle Mystery-Solved" found no mention in 1880 or 1881 newspapers of this alleged incident-he did trace the legend to a book by Rupert Gould "The Stargazer Talks" published in 1943. The Ellen Austin did exist; a check from Lloyd's of London records proved the existence of Meta, built in 1854, and that in 1880, Meta was renamed Ellen Austin. There are no casualty listings for this vessel, or any vessel at that time, that would suggest a large number of missing men were placed on board a derelict that later disappeared although one website includes the alleged derelict vessel incident it does find that Rupert Gould talked about the legend on radio in the 1930s; likewise the website traces the derelict story to a June 1906 newspaper story-which claims the derelict ship incident took place in 1891; however the 1906 story does not give a reference of where this story came from.

1918: USS Cyclops, collier, left Barbados on March 4, lost with all 306 crew and passengers en route to Baltimore, Maryland.

1921: January 31, Carroll A. Deering, five-masted schooner, Captain W. B. Wormell, found aground and abandoned at Diamond Shoals, near Cape Hatteras, North Carolina.

1925: December 1, SS Cotopaxi, having departed Charleston, South Carolina two days earlier bound for Havana, Cuba, radioed a distress call reporting that the ship was sinking. She was officially listed as overdue on 31 December. In 1985 an unknown shipwreck was found off St Augustine, Florida; in 2020 it was identified as the remains of the SS Cotopaxi.

1941: USS Proteus (AC-9), lost with all 58 persons on board in heavy seas, having departed St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands with a cargo of bauxite on 23 November. The following month, her sister ship USS Nereus (AC-10) was lost with all 61 persons on board, having also departed St. Thomas with a cargo of bauxite, on 10 December. According to research by Rear Admiral George van Deurs, USN, who was familiar with this type of ship from their service in the USN, the acidic coal cargo would seriously erode the longitudinal support beams, making these aging and poorly constructed colliers extremely vulnerable to breaking up in heavy seas. They were both sister ships of the USS Cyclops.

1958: Revonoc. A 43-foot racing yawl was lost with owner Harvey Conover and four others aboard, between Key West and Miami in a hurricane. The only trace found was the Revonoc's 14-foot skiff, near Jupiter, Florida.

1963: SS Marine Sulphur Queen, lost with 39 crewmen, having departed Beaumont, Texas, on 2 February with a cargo of 15,260 tons of sulfur. She was last heard from on 4 February, when she was in rough, nearly following seas of 16 feet, with northerly winds of 25–46 knots, and listed as missing two days later. The US Coast Guard subsequently determined that the ship was unsafe and not seaworthy, and never should have sailed. The final report suggested four causes of the disaster, all due to poor design and maintenance of the ship.

1967: December 22, 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.

2015: Late July, two 14-year-old boys, Austin Stephanos, and Perry Cohen went on a fishing trip in their 19-foot boat. Despite the 15,000 square nautical mile wide search by the Coast Guard, the pair's boat was found a year later off the coast of Bermuda, but the boys were never seen again.

2015: October 1, 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.