The Bermuda Triangle gained its notorious fame back in 1840, when the French sailing ship "Rosalie" was discovered drifting near the port of Nassau - the capital of the Bahamas. All the sails were raised on it, all the necessary equipment was available, but the ship's crew itself was absent. It seemed very strange. After inspection, it was found that the ship is in excellent condition, has no damage, and its cargo is intact. But where did the crew disappear to? No entries clarifying the essence of the case were found in the logbook. Further verification, however, found that the ship was not named Rosalie, but Rossini. While sailing near the Bahamas, it ran aground. The crew left it on boats, and at high tide the ship was picked up by the waves and carried out into the open sea. The worn-out writing on the board led to an error, and therefore it was named "Rosalie".
However, not many people believed in this real story, and for some reason a different point of view was established: "Rosalie" is a ghost ship, it was ranked among the cohort of the "Flying Dutchman". There was even another "reliable" story about how it allegedly fell into some strange whirlpool, where clearly unearthly forces operate. At the same time, the team went to the bottom, and the ship was left without control, and therefore the section of the sea between Bermuda, Miami in Florida and Puerto Rico, where it was discovered, was attributed to a mysterious and dangerous triangle. Once in it, the ship could experience various and difficult to explain vicissitudes of fate, dangerous not so much for navigation as for the crew.
This is how the history of the Bermuda Triangle began. A special page in her chronicle was the amazing incident with the brigantine "Maria Celeste" with a displacement of 103 tons. She, like "Rosalie", was found safe and sound, but again … without a team. An even greater number of legends, traditions and explicit fantasies have appeared. Scientists still cannot explain everything that happened to "Maria Celeste". Let's try to reconstruct a little the events of those distant years.
On November 7, 1872, the new brigantine Maria Celeste departed from New York under the command of Captain Benjamin Briggs and headed for Gibraltar. The crew of the vessel consisted of seven people and the captain with his family. In her holds were mostly alcohol, food supplies were enough for six months of travel. It was a light and maneuverable vessel, perfectly obeying the helm. The wind blew into her resilient sails, and the brigantine glided smoothly over the waves.
The captain took his wife and daughter with him on the voyage. He wanted to show them the beauty of the ocean and generally give them a taste of the exotic sea. But only after leaving the sea, the brigantine did not arrive at the port of destination. She disappeared altogether, disappeared from the Azores. A month later, the brigantine was entered into the lists of the missing, and a feast was celebrated for the dead sailors and women.
But soon the cargo ship "Dei Gratia", sailing with a cargo of kerosene from New York to Genoa, found in the Azores region sailing under full sail "Maria Celeste". Captain of the Dei Gratia David Morehouse knew this brigantine, as he knew Captain Briggs. Stopping the course, he began to examine the ship through a telescope. There was not a single person on the deck of the brigantine, and the steering wheel independently and freely rotated in one direction or the other. Was Morehouse trying to find out who was on the ship through the loudspeaker? But his questions remained unanswered. Then he decided to launch the boat and check everything for himself.
Together with a detachment of armed sailors, he boarded the Maria Celeste. There was no one on the ship. All rooms were empty. The missing people did not take anything with them - neither property nor money. In their places were all those items of marine use, which testified that the crew had recently been here. But no sign of a hasty flight, no danger was found. The vessel had no holes, and all the cargo was safe and sound. No trace of the mutiny was found. There were maps on the table in the captain's cabin, marking the route from New York to the port of destination Gibraltar. The last entry was made on November 24, when the brigantine was off the Azores. However, no rescue whaleboat was found on the ship. Where could he disappear?
Captain Morehouse took the brigantine in tow and brought it to Gibraltar. A months-long search began for the missing Captain Briggs, his wife, daughter and crew members. Articles appeared in newspapers, but no one responded to them. As time went on, different versions were put forward about the death of the crew. They talked about the attack of pirates, who captured everyone, threw the ship, and then they themselves, together with the captives, died in the depths of the sea … Others believed that the captain, his wife, daughter and several other sailors were attacked by sharks, and other crew members rushed them save and so they all died. Still others suggested that some supernatural forces intervened in the fate of "Mary Celeste". They talked about a strange print on the captain's bed, "as if a child was lying on it." There was indeed a child on the ship, although some directly stated that it was not a child,but a little man from other worlds.
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But there were also sober heads who recalled the real fate of the ghost ship "Rosalie". It was they who put forward the same version: most likely, “Maria Celeste” ran aground in the Bermuda Triangle. Attempts to remove the brigantine from the shallows were unsuccessful. And then Captain Briggs decided to sail to the shore on a rescue whaleboat. They never reached the coast - a sudden storm and huge waves could flood a small whaleboat. The same storm tore off the shallows and "Mary Celeste" and sent her to drift.
The full truth about "Mary Celeste" and her missing crew, probably no one will ever know. In any case, only assumptions can be made. Meanwhile, the list of lost ships in the Bermuda region continued to grow. On the last day of January 1880, the British training sailing ship Atalanta was there with 290 officers and cadets on board. It did not reach the port of destination and did not return to its homeland. Nobody else saw him and nothing is known about his fate. A year later, the English ship "Ellen Austin" met in the open ocean, again not far from Bermuda, a schooner sailing, which also had no crew. It was not possible to stop it, as it was not possible to read its name. Maybe it was the mysteriously disappeared Atalanta? And again the legend of the ghost ship came to mind.
The 20th century was no less fruitful for the missing sea vessels. On October 20, 1902, the German four-masted merchant ship Freya was encountered in the Atlantic Ocean - without a crew. The weather in those days was fine, there was no storm for a long time. What could have happened to the team? Where did people disappear to?
On March 4, 1918, the American Cyclops ore carrier with a displacement of nineteen thousand tons with 309 crew members departed from the island of Barbados. On board was a valuable cargo - manganese ore. It was one of the largest vessels, it was 180 meters long and had excellent seaworthiness. The Cyclops was on its way to Baltimore, but never arrived at the port of destination. No one recorded any distress signals from him. He also disappeared, but where? Initially, it was suggested that a German submarine attacked him. The First World War was going on, and German submarines roamed the waters of the Atlantic. But the study of military archives, including German, did not confirm this assumption. If the Germans attacked, torpedoed and sank such a large ship as the Cyclops, they would certainly have informed the whole world about it. And the Cyclops just disappeared.
Several years later, the command of the US Navy issued the following statement: “The disappearance of the Cyclops is one of the largest and most intractable cases in the annals of the Navy. Even the place of his catastrophe has not been precisely established, the causes of the accident are not known, not the slightest trace of death has been found. None of the proposed versions of the catastrophe gives a satisfactory explanation, it is not clear under what circumstances it disappeared."
Military people, adhering to strict logic, underwent their complete helplessness. So what could have caused the ship to disappear? The then US President Thomas Woodrow Wilson said that only God and the sea know what happened to the ship.
The sad list of lost ships in the Bermuda Triangle could be continued. One could continue to talk about the mysterious cases of disappearance (and death?) Of ships in this area, because since the beginning of the century there were about fifteen of them. But suddenly in the Bermuda Triangle … planes began to disappear. With their disappearance, interest in the mysterious triangle increased significantly and began to be fueled by the press in every possible way. It is no coincidence that not only sailors and pilots paid attention to the Bermuda Triangle, but also geographers, scientists - researchers of the sea depths, governments of different countries. And the primary reason for this was the disappearance of the air link of American aircraft.
In early December 1945, five Avenger-class torpedo bombers flew from the US Naval Air Force Base in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
And here is the data from the post-war period. On February 2, 1953, just north of the Bermuda Triangle, an English military transport aircraft flew with 39 crew members and military on board. Suddenly, radio communication with him was interrupted, and at the appointed time the plane did not return to the base. The cargo ship "Woodward" sent in search of the alleged crash site could not find anything: a strong wind was blowing, there was a small wave at sea. But no oily stains, no debris …
Exactly one year later, at almost the same place, a US naval aircraft with 42 people on board disappeared. Hundreds of ships sailed the ocean hoping to find at least the remains of an aircraft. But again all their searches were unsuccessful: nothing was found. American experts could not give any explanation for the cause of the disaster.
This list, which already consists of fifty ships and aircraft, ends with the loss of the cargo ship Anita. In March 1973, it left the port of Norfolk with coal for the Atlantic and was heading for Hamburg. In the area of the Bermuda Triangle, it was caught in a storm and, without giving a distress SOS signal, is believed to have sunk. A few days later, a single lifebuoy with the inscription "Anita" was found in the sea.
The Bermuda Triangle - which borders Bermuda, Miami in Florida and Puerto Rico - is over one million square kilometers. The bottom topography in this area is well studied. On the shelf of all these places, many drilling was carried out in order to find oil and other minerals. The current, water temperature at different times of the year, its salinity and the movement of air masses over the ocean - all these natural data are included in all special catalogs. This area is not very different from other similar geographic locations. And nevertheless, it was in the area of the Bermuda Triangle that ships, and then planes, mysteriously disappeared.
From the book: "HUNDRED GREAT DISASTERS". N. A. Ionina, M. N. Kubeev