List of Bermuda Triangle incidents

Last updated April 18, 2024

This is a list of incidents attributed in popular culture to the Bermuda Triangle or Devil's Triangle.

Aircraft incidents

1945: July 10, Thomas Arthur Garner, AMM3, USN, along with eleven other crew members, was lost at sea in a US Navy PBM3S patrol seaplane, Bu. No.6545, Sqd VPB2-OTU#3, in the Bermuda Triangle. They left Naval Air Station, Banana River, Florida, at 7:07 p.m. on July 9, 1945, for a radar training flight to Great Exuma, Bahamas. Their last radio position report was sent at 1:16 a.m., July 10, 1945, with a latitude/longitude of 25.22N 77.34W, near Providence Island, after which they were never heard from again. An extensive ten-day surface and air search, including a carrier sweep, found nothing.^[1]
1945: December 5, Flight 19 (five TBF Avengers) lost with 14 airmen, and later the same day PBM Mariner BuNo 59225 lost with 13 airmen while searching for Flight 19.^[2]
1947: July 3, a Douglas C-54 crashed off the Florida coast after the pilot lost control in turbulence.^[3]
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.^[4]
1948: December 28, Douglas DC-3 NC16002 lost with three crew and 36 passengers, en route from San Juan, Puerto Rico, to Miami, Florida.^[5]
1949: January 17, Avro Tudor G-AGRE Star Ariel lost with seven crew and 13 passengers, en route from Kindley Field, Bermuda, to Kingston Airport, Jamaica.^[6]
1965: June 9, A USAF C-119 Flying Boxcar of the 440th Troop Carrier Wing missing between Florida and Grand Turk Island ^[7] The last call from the plane came from a point just north of Crooked Island, Bahamas, and 177 miles from Grand Turk Island. On July 18, 1965, debris from the plane was found on the beach of Gold Rock Cay just off the northeastern shore of Acklins Island.^[8]
1965: December 6, Private ERCO Ercoupe F01^[9] lost with pilot and one passenger, en route from Ft. Lauderdale to Grand Bahamas Island.^[10]
2005: June 20, A Piper PA-23 disappeared between Treasure Cay Island, Bahamas and Fort Pierce, Florida. There were three people on board.^[11]
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.^[12]
2017: 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.^[13] Plane wreckage was found later.^[14]

Incidents at sea

1800: USS Pickering, on course from Guadeloupe to Delaware, lost with 91 people on board.^[15] (Possibly lost in a gale)
1814: USS Wasp, last known position was the Caribbean, lost with 140 people on board.^[15] (Possibly lost in a storm)
1824: USS Wild Cat, on course from Cuba to Tompkins Island, lost with 14 people on board.^[15] (Lost in a gale with 31 on board)
1840: Rosalie, found abandoned.^[15] (Possibly the "Rossini" found derelict)^[16]
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;^[17] likewise the website traces the derelict story to a June 1906 newspaper story-which claims the derelict ship incident took place in 1891;^[17] 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.^[18]
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.^[19]
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.^[20] In 1985 an unknown shipwreck was found off St Augustine, Florida; in 2020 it was identified as the remains of the SS Cotopaxi.^[21]
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.^[22] 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.^[23]
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.^[24]
1967: December 22, Miami hotel owner and yachtsman Dan Burack set out on his cabin cruiser Witchcraft with a priest named Patrick Horgan.^[25]^[26] The ship was taken one mile off the Miami coastline so that Burack and Horgan could view the Christmas lights visible from the shore.^[25]^[26] 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.^[26] The Coast Guard requested that he send up a flare in roughly 20 minutes so that the boat could be more easily located.^[26] The official who received the call reportedly later noted that Burack did not seem too concerned about the Witchcraft,^[25] a boat that Burack had fitted with a special floatation device in its hull.^[27] When the Coast Guard arrived at the location from which Burack called, he, Horgan, and the Witchcraft were nowhere to be found.^[25]^[27] Over the following days, a search was conducted over hundreds of square miles of ocean, but the boat and its passengers were never found.^[25]^[28]
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,^[29] the pair's boat was found a year later off the coast of Bermuda, but the boys were never seen again.^[30]
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.

Incidents on land

1969: August, Great Isaac Lighthouse (Bimini, Bahamas), during a hurricane, two keepers disappeared and were never found.^[31]

Related Research Articles

The Bermuda Triangle, also known as the Devil's Triangle, is an urban legend focused on a loosely defined region in the western part of the North Atlantic Ocean where a number of aircraft and ships are said to have disappeared under mysterious circumstances. The idea of the area as uniquely prone to disappearances arose in the mid-20th century, but most reputable sources dismiss the idea that there is any mystery.

British South American Airways (BSAA) was a state-run airline of the United Kingdom in the mid-to-late 1940s responsible for services to the Caribbean and South America. Originally named British Latin American Air Lines, it was renamed before services started in 1946. BSAA operated mostly Avro aircraft: Yorks, Lancastrians and Tudors and flew to Bermuda, the West Indies, Mexico and the western coast of South America. After two high-profile aircraft disappearances it was merged into the British Overseas Airways Corporation at the end of 1949.

Flight 19 was the designation of a group of five General Motors TBM Avenger torpedo bombers that disappeared over the Bermuda Triangle on December 5, 1945, after losing contact during a United States Navy overwater navigation training flight from Naval Air Station Fort Lauderdale, Florida. All 14 naval aviators on the flight were lost, as were all 13 crew members of a Martin PBM Mariner flying boat that subsequently launched from Naval Air Station Banana River to search for Flight 19.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ghost ship</span> Ship with no living people onboard

A ghost ship, also known as a phantom ship, is a vessel with no living crew aboard; it may be a fictional ghostly vessel, such as the Flying Dutchman, or a physical derelict found adrift with its crew missing or dead, like the Mary Celeste. The term is sometimes used for ships that have been decommissioned but not yet scrapped, as well as drifting boats that have been found after breaking loose of their ropes and being carried away by the wind or the waves.

USS Cyclops (AC-4) was the second of four Proteus-class colliers built for the United States Navy several years before World War I. Named after the Cyclops, a race of giants from Greek mythology, she was the second U.S. naval vessel to bear the name. The loss of the ship and 306 crew and passengers without a trace sometime after 4 March 1918 remains the single largest loss of life in the history of the United States Navy not directly involving combat.

Grandeur of the Seas is a Vision-class cruise ship owned and operated by Royal Caribbean International. Features include a full-service spa, six whirlpools, an outdoor jogging track and a number of bars and restaurants. It was announced on 16 October 2019 that Grandeur of the Seas will be transferred in the second quarter of 2021 to Pullmantur Cruises, in which Royal Caribbean has a 49% stake. These plans were cancelled in mid-2020. It is currently the oldest ship still operating for Royal Caribbean.

SS <i>Marine Sulphur Queen</i> American commercial tanker ship that disappeared in 1963

SS Marine Sulphur Queen, formally Esso New Haven, was T2 tanker converted to carry molten sulphur. It is notable for its disappearance in 1963 near the southern coast of Florida, taking the lives of 39 crewmen.

The disappearance of a Douglas DST airliner, registered NC16002, occurred on the night of 28 December 1948 near the end of a scheduled flight from San Juan, Puerto Rico, to Miami, Florida. The aircraft carried 29 passengers and three crew members. No probable cause for the loss was determined by the official investigation and it remains unsolved.

SLNS Samudura (P621) is a Sri Lanka Navy Offshore Patrol Vessel. Originally commissioned by the United States Coast Guard in 1968 as the medium endurance cutter USCGC Courageous, she was donated to Sri Lanka in 2004 and commissioned on 19 February 2005.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Battle of the Caribbean</span> 1941–1945 naval campaign between Allied and Axis forces in World War II

The Battle of the Caribbean refers to a naval campaign waged during World War II that was part of the Battle of the Atlantic, from 1941 to 1945. German U-boats and Italian submarines attempted to disrupt the Allied supply of oil and other material. They sank shipping in the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico and attacked coastal targets in the Antilles. Improved Allied anti-submarine warfare eventually drove the Axis submarines out of the Caribbean region.

USS Gannet (AM-41) was an Lapwing-class minesweeper built for the United States Navy near the end of World War I.

USS Neal A. Scott (DE-769) was a Cannon-class destroyer escort in service with the United States Navy from 1944 to 1946. She was sold for scrapping in 1969.

USS Ramsden (DE-382) was an Edsall-class destroyer escort built for the U.S. Navy during World War II. She served in the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean and provided destroyer escort protection against submarine and air attack for Navy vessels and convoys. Post-war, she performed other tasks with the U.S. Coast Guard and with the U.S. Navy as a radar picket ship.

USS Yakutat (AVP-32) was a United States Navy Barnegat-class small seaplane tender in commission from 1944 to 1946. Yakutat tended seaplanes in combat areas in the Pacific during the latter stages of World War II. After the war, she was in commission in the United States Coast Guard from 1948 to 1971 as the Coast Guard cutter USCGC Yakutat (WAVP-380), later WHEC-380, seeing service in the Vietnam War during her Coast Guard career. Transferred to South Vietnam in 1971, she was commissioned into the Republic of Vietnam Navy as the frigate RVNS Trần Nhật Duật (HQ-03). When South Vietnam collapsed in 1975 at the end of the Vietnam War, she fled to the Philippines, where the Philippine Navy took custody of her and cannibalized her for spare parts until discarding her in 1982.

USS Unimak (AVP-31) was a United States Navy Barnegat-class small seaplane tender in commission from 1943 to 1946 that saw service in World War II. After the war, she was in commission in the United States Coast Guard as the cutter USCGC Unimak (WAVP-379), later WHEC-379, WTR-379, and again WHEC-379, from 1949 to 1975 and from 1977 to 1988.

USCGC Seneca, or before 1915 USRC Seneca, was a United States Coast Guard cutter built and commissioned as a "derelict destroyer" with the specific mission of locating and then destroying abandoned shipwrecks that were still afloat and were a menace to navigation. She was designed with excellent sea-keeping qualities, a long cruising range, good towing capabilities, and by necessity the capacity to store a large amount of munitions. She was one of five Coast Guard cutters serving with the U.S. Navy in European waters during World War I.

USS Henry R. Mallory (ID-1280) was a transport for the United States Navy during World War I. She was also sometimes referred to as USS H. R. Mallory or as USS Mallory. Before her Navy service she was USAT Henry R. Mallory as a United States Army transport ship. From her 1916 launch, and after her World War I military service, she was known as SS Henry R. Mallory for the Mallory Lines. Pressed into service as a troopship in World War II by the War Shipping Administration, she was torpedoed by the German submarine U-402 in the North Atlantic Ocean and sank with the loss of 272 men—over half of those on board.

Star Tiger was an Avro Tudor IV passenger aircraft owned and operated by British South American Airways (BSAA) which disappeared without a trace over the Atlantic Ocean while on a flight between Santa Maria in the Azores and Bermuda in the early morning of 30 January 1948. The loss of the aircraft, along with that of BSAA Avro Tudor Star Ariel in 1949, remains unsolved, with the resulting speculation helping to develop the Bermuda Triangle legend.

Star Ariel was an Avro Tudor Mark IVB passenger aircraft owned and operated by British South American Airways (BSAA) which disappeared without a trace over the Atlantic Ocean while on a flight between Bermuda and Kingston, Jamaica, on 17 January 1949. The loss of the aircraft, along with that of BSAA Avro Tudor Star Tiger in January 1948, remains unsolved, with the resulting speculation helping to develop the Bermuda Triangle legend.

Perry Cohen and Austin Stephanos were two fourteen-year-old friends who vanished during a fishing trip on July 24, 2015 in Tequesta, Florida.

References

↑ "VPNAVY - VPB-2 Memorial Page".
↑ "The Loss Of Flight 19". Department of the Navy, Naval Historical Center. Archived from the original on July 9, 1997.
↑ Harro Ranter (3 July 1947). "ASN Aircraft accident Douglas C-54G-1-DO Skymaster 45-519 Florida coast, USA".
↑ G-AHNP Aviation Safety Network – Avro 688 Tudor 1 G-AHNP
↑ NC16002 Aviation Safety Network – Douglas DC-3DST-144 NC16002
↑ G-AGRE Avro 688 Tudor Mk.1 G-AGRE c/n 1253 – Jack McKillop
↑ Ranter, Harro. "ASN Aircraft accident Fairchild C-119G Flying Boxcar 51-2680 Crooked Island, Bahamas". aviation-safety.net. Retrieved 15 July 2017.
↑ "The Milwaukee Journal August 11, 1965". google.com. Archived from the original on 27 July 2020. Retrieved 15 July 2017.
↑ [The Legend lists plane loss as a "Cessna" But see NTSA report]
↑ "NTSB Record as NTSB Identification: MIA66A0065". ntsb.gov. Retrieved 15 July 2017.
↑ "Recent Disappearances in the Bermuda Triangle". lovetoknow.com. Retrieved November 4, 2016.
↑ "The Turkish Airlines plane en route to Cuba landed to the US". 23 February 2017.
↑ "U.S. Coast Guard suspends search for four whose plane was lost near Bahamas". Reuters. 19 May 2017. Retrieved 30 April 2023.
↑ Ranter, Harro. "ASN Aircraft 15-MAY-2017 Mitsubishi MU-2B-40 N220N". aviation-safety.net. Retrieved 15 July 2017.
1 2 3 4 Berlitz, Charles, and J. Manson Valentine. Without a Trace. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1977. Print.
↑ "The derelict Rosalie". www.bermuda-triangle.org. Archived from the original on March 5, 2016.
1 2 Sometimes Interesting (2015-12-10). "The Ellen Austin Encounter". Sometimes Interesting. Retrieved 2017-07-17.
↑ USS Cyclops Archived 2010-08-10 at the Wayback Machine Department of the Navy, Naval Historical Center – Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships
↑ Simpson, Bland (2005). Ghost Ship of Diamond Shoals. UNC Press Books. ISBN 9780807856178.
↑ "Mails and Shipping". The Times. No. 44157. London. 31 December 1925. col D, p. 18.
↑ Popular Mechanics 2020
↑ Rob Fisher. "Naval History.ca – History of the Royal Canadian Navy – Canadian Merchant Ship Losses, 1939–1945".
↑ Nature Keeps a Grim Date at sea Sports Illustrated January 20, 1958 Archive accessed September 29,2018
↑ "Marine Sulphur Queen Coast Guard Report Summary of Findings". pacbell.net. Archived from the original on 9 May 2008. Retrieved 15 July 2017.
1 2 3 4 5 Cock-Starkey, Claire (August 5, 2016). "7 Ships That Disappeared Without a Trace". Mental Floss . Retrieved June 4, 2021.
1 2 3 4 Stewart 2009, p. 20.
1 2 Stewart 2009, p. 22.
↑ Stewart 2009, p. 23.
↑ "2 Boys in a Fishing Boat Vanish In the Bermuda Triangle". madmikesamerica.com. 26 July 2015. Retrieved 15 July 2017.
↑ Angel, Greg (2017-04-23). "One Year Later: Austin & Perry Boat Found". cbs12.com. Retrieved 15 July 2017.
↑ Quasar, Gian. Into the Bermuda Triangle: Pursuing the Truth Behind the World's Greatest Mystery (The McGraw-Hill Companies, 2004), Chapter 3: The Riddle of the Vanished Ships, p.71.

Bibliography

Stewart, Gail B. (2009). The Bermuda Triangle. ReferencePoint Press, Inc. ISBN 978-1-60152-336-5.

External links

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[1] "VPNAVY - VPB-2 Memorial Page".

[2] "The Loss Of Flight 19". Department of the Navy, Naval Historical Center. Archived from the original on July 9, 1997.

[3] Harro Ranter (3 July 1947). "ASN Aircraft accident Douglas C-54G-1-DO Skymaster 45-519 Florida coast, USA".

[4] G-AHNP Aviation Safety Network – Avro 688 Tudor 1 G-AHNP

[5] NC16002 Aviation Safety Network – Douglas DC-3DST-144 NC16002

[6] G-AGRE Avro 688 Tudor Mk.1 G-AGRE c/n 1253 – Jack McKillop

[7] Ranter, Harro. "ASN Aircraft accident Fairchild C-119G Flying Boxcar 51-2680 Crooked Island, Bahamas". aviation-safety.net. Retrieved 15 July 2017.

[8] "The Milwaukee Journal August 11, 1965". google.com. Archived from the original on 27 July 2020. Retrieved 15 July 2017.

[9] [The Legend lists plane loss as a "Cessna" But see NTSA report]

[10] "NTSB Record as NTSB Identification: MIA66A0065". ntsb.gov. Retrieved 15 July 2017.

[recent-11] "Recent Disappearances in the Bermuda Triangle". lovetoknow.com. Retrieved November 4, 2016.

[12] "The Turkish Airlines plane en route to Cuba landed to the US". 23 February 2017.

[13] "U.S. Coast Guard suspends search for four whose plane was lost near Bahamas". Reuters. 19 May 2017. Retrieved 30 April 2023.

[14] Ranter, Harro. "ASN Aircraft 15-MAY-2017 Mitsubishi MU-2B-40 N220N". aviation-safety.net. Retrieved 15 July 2017.

[Berlitz77-15] 1 2 3 4 Berlitz, Charles, and J. Manson Valentine. Without a Trace. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1977. Print.

[16] "The derelict Rosalie". www.bermuda-triangle.org. Archived from the original on March 5, 2016.

[Sometimes_Interesting-17] 1 2 Sometimes Interesting (2015-12-10). "The Ellen Austin Encounter". Sometimes Interesting. Retrieved 2017-07-17.

[18] USS Cyclops Archived 2010-08-10 at the Wayback Machine Department of the Navy, Naval Historical Center – Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships

[19] Simpson, Bland (2005). Ghost Ship of Diamond Shoals. UNC Press Books. ISBN 9780807856178.

[Times311225-20] "Mails and Shipping". The Times. No. 44157. London. 31 December 1925. col D, p. 18.

[21] Popular Mechanics 2020

[familyheritage-22] Rob Fisher. "Naval History.ca – History of the Royal Canadian Navy – Canadian Merchant Ship Losses, 1939–1945".

[23] Nature Keeps a Grim Date at sea Sports Illustrated January 20, 1958 Archive accessed September 29,2018

[24] "Marine Sulphur Queen Coast Guard Report Summary of Findings". pacbell.net. Archived from the original on 9 May 2008. Retrieved 15 July 2017.

[Cock-Starkey_2016-25] 1 2 3 4 5 Cock-Starkey, Claire (August 5, 2016). "7 Ships That Disappeared Without a Trace". Mental Floss . Retrieved June 4, 2021.

[FOOTNOTEStewart200920-26] 1 2 3 4 Stewart 2009, p. 20.

[FOOTNOTEStewart200922-27] 1 2 Stewart 2009, p. 22.

[FOOTNOTEStewart200923-28] Stewart 2009, p. 23.

[29] "2 Boys in a Fishing Boat Vanish In the Bermuda Triangle". madmikesamerica.com. 26 July 2015. Retrieved 15 July 2017.

[30] Angel, Greg (2017-04-23). "One Year Later: Austin & Perry Boat Found". cbs12.com. Retrieved 15 July 2017.

[Quasar,_Gian_2004-31] Quasar, Gian. Into the Bermuda Triangle: Pursuing the Truth Behind the World's Greatest Mystery (The McGraw-Hill Companies, 2004), Chapter 3: The Riddle of the Vanished Ships, p.71.

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