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The Bermuda Project

Project Submitted to
Sri Chaitanya CBSE College, Mangalore
for
the partial completion of Term 2, Class XI

Subject: English
Submitted by Neha Sathish
Submitted to : Department of English,
Sri Chaitanya CBSE college,
Mangalore.

Date: 14/03/2022 Place: Mangalore

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The Bermuda Project

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
TABLE OF CONTENTS 2
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 3
Introduction 4
What Is The Bermuda Triangle? 4
What Makes It A Mystery? 5
Death 5
Magic Fog? 5
Aliens? 5
Wormhole? 6
Incidents At The Bermuda Triangle 7
Incidents At Air 7
Incidents At Sea 8
Mythology And Theories 9
General Knowledge 9
Myths And Legends 9
Theories 10
The Science Behind The Anomaly 11
Rogue Waves 11
Human Error 12
Traffic 12
Conclusions 13
Bibliography 14
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We are very grateful to our teacher Mr. Joshwa Daouza who

gave us a chance to work on this project. We would like to thank him
for giving us valuable suggestions and ideas. We would also like to
thank our college for providing us all the necessary resources for the
project. All in all, we would like to thank everyone involved in this
project and helped us with their suggestions to make the project better.
We have taken a lot of effort into this project. Completing this project
would not have been possible without the support of our group and
friends. Finally, we would like to thank our parents and friends for
always being with us and supporting us in every situation.
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Introduction
What Is The Bermuda Triangle?
The Bermuda Triangle is a patch
of the Atlantic Ocean formed
between Florida, Puerto Rico and
Bermuda.

For decades, the Atlantic Ocean’s

fabled Bermuda Triangle has
captured the human imagination with
unexplained disappearances of ships,
planes, and people.

Some speculate that unknown and

mysterious forces account for the
unexplained disappearances, such as
extraterrestrials capturing humans for
study; the influence of the lost continent of Atlantis; vortices that suck objects into other
dimensions; and other whimsical ideas.

Some explanations are more grounded in science, if not in evidence. Environmental

considerations could explain many, if not most, of the disappearances. Additionally, the large
number of islands in the Caribbean Sea creates many areas of shallow water that can be
treacherous to ship navigation. And there is some evidence to suggest that the Bermuda
Triangle is a place where a “magnetic” compass sometimes points towards “true” north, as
opposed to “magnetic” north.
The U.S. Navy and U.S. Coast Guard contend that there are no supernatural
explanations for disasters at sea. 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-travelled area of the ocean.

"Would you learn the secret of the sea? Only those who brave its dangers, comprehend its
mystery!"
- HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
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What Makes It A Mystery?

Death

The Triangle has been the place of Death for many centuries. The exact number of ships
and aeroplanes that have disappeared in the Bermuda Triangle is not known. The most common
estimate is about 50 ships and 20 airplanes.The wreckage of many ships and aeroplanes
reported missing in the region has not been recovered. It is not known whether disappearances
in the Bermuda Triangle have been the result of human error or weather phenomena. By all
approximations, the region has a vaguely triangular shape.The Bermuda Triangle does not
appear on any world maps, and the U.S. Board on Geographic Names does not recognize the
Bermuda Triangle as an official region of the Atlantic Ocean.

The disappearances within the waters of the Bermuda Triangle all occurred at various
spots and each was subjected to different circumstances. Thus, the scientific community
maintains that there is no single theory that can explain all the disappearances. The following
are some of the mainstream theories that have been put forward as plausible explanations over
the years.

Magic Fog?

This theory corresponds with testimonies about vessels being engulfed in some kind of
electronic fog. It is said that the fog is not stagnant and appears to move in parallel with the
vessel, causing its electronics to malfunction gradually. Eventually, the vessel is incapacitated
and may even vanish without a trace.

Aliens?

Some writers “have blamed UFOs

for the disappearances”, and that
they “believe that aliens use the
Triangle as a portal to travel to and
from our planet”.

“The area is like a

gathering station where they
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capture people, ships and aircraft to conduct research.”

Wormhole?

For science fiction enthusiasts, the wormhole theory holds a lot of appeal. A wormhole
is essentially a space-time shortcut that could, in theory, even potentially allow time travel.

Although wormholes haven’t been proven to exist yet, it hasn’t stopped them from
being thrown about as a Bermuda Triangle theory. Some people point to the wormhole
explanation as a reason why many vessels aren’t found after crashing in the Bermuda Triangle,
while others attribute this to the current of the Gulf Stream.
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Incidents At The Bermuda Triangle

Incidents At Air

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.
1947: July 3, a Douglas C-54 crashed off the Florida coast after the pilot lost control in
turbulence.
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.
1948: December 28, Douglas DC-3 NC16002 lost with three crew and 36 passengers,
en route from San Juan, Puerto Rico, to Miami, Florida.
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.
1949: November 16, a B-29 [42-65289] (2nd Bomb Sq) ditched in the Atlantic. Two
crewmen were missing but three days later 18 survivors were rescued 385 miles northeast of
Bermuda.
1956: November 9, a Martin Marlin (VP-49) lost with ten crewmen taking off from
Bermuda.
1962: January 8, a USAF KB-50 51-0465 (427th AR Sq) was lost over the Atlantic
between the US East Coast and the Azores.
1965: June 9, A USAF C-119 Flying Boxcar of the 440th Troop Carrier Wing missing
between Florida and Grand Turk Island.
1965: December 6, Private ERCO Ercoupe F01 lost with pilot and one passenger, en
route from Ft. Lauderdale to Grand Bahamas Island.
1971: July 23, 4 seater Cessna 337 Super Skymaster went down between Curaçao &
Barbados with 4 passengers aboard:
1978: November 3, Eastern Caribbean Airways Flight 912, a Piper Chieftain flown by
Irving Rivers, arriving at St. Thomas from St. Croix vanished after being sighted by the control
tower, and no trace was ever found.
2005: June 20, A Piper PA-23 disappeared between Treasure Cay Island, Bahamas and
Fort Pierce, Florida. There were three people on board.
2007: April 10, A Piper PA-46-310P disappeared near Bird Cay after flying into a level
6 thunderstorm and losing altitude. Two fatalities were listed.
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.
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. Plane wreckage was found later.
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Incidents At Sea
1492: October 11, Christopher Columbus and the crew of Santa Maria reported seeing
unknown lights one day before the landing at Guanahani.
1800: USS Pickering, on course from Guadeloupe to Delaware, lost with 90 people on
board. (Possibly lost in a gale)
1814: USS Wasp, last known position was the Caribbean, lost with 140 people on
board.
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.
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.
1958: Revonoc. A 43-foot racing yawl was lost with owner Harvey Conover and four
others between Key West and Miami Florida in a hurricane. The only trace found was the
Revonoc 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 sulphur.
1980: January 12, HMCS St. Laurent (DDH 205) sank off Cape Hatteras, the closest
point on the North American mainland to Bermuda. The ship took on water after encountering
the tail end of a storm.
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.
2020: 29ft Blue & White Mako Cuddy Cabin Vessel, with 20 on board, last seen
publicly during departure on December 28, 2020.
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Mythology And Theories

General Knowledge
Some have called it The Devil's Triangle. Others have referred to it as Limbo of the
Lost or the Hoodoo Sea. But to most, it is the Bermuda Triangle, a stretch of water in the
Atlantic Ocean known to swallow ships and vanished planes. For centuries the Bermuda
Triangle has been mystified as a harrowing patch of ocean, where sailors and pilots are prone to
lose contact with the natural world and disappear forever. Though the US government does not
recognize the Bermuda Triangle as an actual geographic location or threat, its legends have
long painted a picture of death, mystery, and fear.

Myths And Legends

When Christopher Columbus passed through the Bermuda
Triangle on his first voyage to the new world, he recorded that a
bursting flame of fire struck the sea and caused a strange light to
appear in the distance a few weeks later.

In 1895, Joshua Slocum, the first man to sail solo around the
world, vanished on a voyage from Martha's Vineyard to South
America. Slocum should have never been lost at sea — he was known
as a fantastic sailor — and his unexpected disappearance has since
been attributed to the Bermuda Triangle.

In 1918, the US Navy's largest and fastest fuel ship, the USS
Cyclops, disappeared en route from the
Caribbean to Baltimore with 309 crew
members and didn't leave a single trace
of what had happened. Theories of
mutiny, storms, poison, and torpedoes
began to circulate, but none of it made
much sense. If there was a wreck, where
was the debris? Why was there no
distress call? How could it have been
captured when it lacked the fuel to travel
very far? Instead, people turned their
minds to mysterious beasts, such as the
giant squid, and the treacherous workings
of the Bermuda Triangle.
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Theories
It was said that Bermuda Triangle is one place where the compass points to the True
North (i.e. the geographic north pole) and the captains failed to make the necessary
adjustments. The fact is, a compass always points to the Magnetic North and not the True
North. There are a few points on earth's surface such as a narrow channel in Bermuda Triangle,
where the angular difference between these two north poles becomes zero and that is when they
appear to be on a straight line to a ship

And there were also theories proposed around some Electronic Fog that would appear
from nowhere and engulf a ship or a plane and finally cause it to disappear.

Few bizarre theories included the mythical City of Atlantis that lay under the ocean that
is able to destroy ships and planes with
its powerful crystal energy, aliens
capturing aircraft for their
experimentation, time-warps in the
triangle area taking ships, planes and
people into a different time and space.

Another popular theory is that extraterrestrials are abducting planes and ships, or that
their activities are indirectly causing the disappearances. Others have suggested that the
Bermuda Triangle area is an anomaly of space and time in which planes, ships, and people are
sucked into a vortex that transports them to different times, and possibly even different
dimensions.
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The Science Behind The Anomaly

Rogue Waves

According to scientists at the University of Southampton, there are 1000ft rogue waves
present inside the triangle that may be a reason behind so many ships or planes sunk within it.
Scientists have explained their terminology on Channel 5 in the documentary “The
Bermuda Triangle Enigma,” where they used indoor simulators to create the monster water
surges.
For proper explanation, scientists created a model USS Cyclops. And because of its
sheer size and flat base, it does not take long before the model is overcome with water during
the simulation. The Cyclops was a 542-feet vessel used to ferry fuel during World War 1 and
vanished while on its way from Bahia to Baltimore in 1918. Some experts argue that the
Cyclops met with a supernatural end.

Possibly the most significant loss in US Naval history, the ship could have disappeared
anywhere and not necessarily in the triangle itself. Dr. Simon Boxall, an ocean and earth
scientist, said, “That infamous area in the Atlantic can see three massive storms coming
together from different directions – the perfect conditions for a rogue wave.”

“Such a surge in water could snap a boat, such as the Cyclops, in TWO.”
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Human Error

Human error, combined with natural phenomena, has been documented as the most
common cause of a plane crash or ship wreck and therefore is the most compelling explanation

for the disappearances in the Bermuda Triangle. This is supported by the fact that in recent
years the number of lost ships and planes has gone down drastically as transportation
technology has greatly improved.

Traffic
Karl Kruszelnicki, an Australian Scientist, has insisted the reason why so many ships
and planes vanish without trace in the area between Bermuda, Florida, Puerto Rico is nothing
to do with aliens or fire-crystals from the lost city of Atlantis.

Instead, he ‘revealed’, the high number of disappearances is explained by nothing more

supernatural than plain old human error plus bad weather and the fact that lots of planes and
ships enter that area of the Atlantic Ocean in the first place.

Mr Kruszelnicki told news.com.au that not only does the Bermuda Triangle - (aka
'Hoodoo Sea’, ‘Devil’s Triangle’, ‘Limbo of the Lost’ and other headline-friendly monikers) –
cover a large, 700,000 square-kilometre (270,000 square-mile) swathe of ocean, it is also a
particularly busy patch of sea.
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Conclusions

There are many who discount anything mysterious happening at all in the Bermuda
Triangle, offering a wide range of explanations for the many disappearances that have
occurred.
The majority of Atlantic tropical storms and hurricanes pass through the Bermuda
Triangle, and in the days prior to improved weather forecasting, these dangerous storms
claimed many ships. Also, the Gulf stream can cause rapid, sometimes violent, changes in
weather.
Additionally, the large number of islands in the Caribbean Sea creates many areas of
shallow water that can be treacherous to ship navigation. And there is some evidence to suggest
that the Bermuda Triangle is a place where a “magnetic” compass sometimes points towards
“true” north, as opposed to “magnetic” north. 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-travelled area of the ocean.
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Bibliography
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YouTube, 2 Jan. 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHx2dxqxxmg.

Colarossi, Natalie. “Vanished without a Trace: Inside the Myths and Mysteries of the Bermuda
Triangle.” Business Insider, 25 Feb. 2020,
https://www.businessinsider.in/science/news/vanished-without-a-trace-inside-the-myths-and-m
ysteries-of-the-bermuda-triangle/articleshow/74309795.cms.

Admin. Bermuda Triangle Facts & Myths You Need To Know,

https://www.bermuda-attractions.com/bermuda2_00004e.htm.

Malewar, Amit, et al. “Bermuda Triangle Mystery 'Solved,' Scientists Claim.” Tech Explorist,
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“Scientist 'Solves' Mystery of the Bermuda Triangle – by Claiming There Was No Mystery in
the First Place.” The Independent, Independent Digital News and Media, 27 July 2017,
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MacDonald, Fiona. “What's the Real Science behind the ‘Bermuda Triangle’?” ScienceAlert,
https://www.sciencealert.com/what-s-the-real-science-behind-the-bermuda-triangle-mystery.

US Department of Commerce, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “What Is

the Bermuda Triangle?” NOAA's National Ocean Service, 1 June 2013,
https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/bermudatri.html.

“Bermuda Triangle.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 7 Mar. 2022,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bermuda_Triangle.

Crookes, David, and All About Space magazine. “South Atlantic Anomaly: Have Astronomers
Finally Explained Space's Bermuda Triangle?” Space.com, Space, 8 July 2020,
https://www.space.com/bermuda-triangle-in-space.html.

“Top 7 Theories behind the Mysterious Bermuda Triangle.” 30A, 8 Sept. 2021,
https://30a.com/bermuda-triangle/.