Thursday, December 1, 2011

Timandra

Timandra, March 6, 1917.

The freighter Timandra was lost (vanished?) east of Norfolk, Virginia, with a company of nineteen. (Berlitz, Without a Trace, p. 23.)

Timandra was built by Robert Duncan Company, Glasgow, Scotland in 1885. The American owned ship was a 1,579-ton iron-hulled sailing bark 245 feet in length. She was owned by the Timandra Shipping Company, Boston, Massachusetts. She was equipped with wireless.



Timandra, under command of Captain Richard Lee, with a crew of 17 and his wife, sailed from Sewell's Point in the harbor of Hampton Roads, Virginia, on March 6, 1917, for Campana, Argentina. Her cargo consisted of Pocahontas bituminous coal. The ship has not been sighted since her sailing and no wireless communications have been received. On March 27, 1917, the sailing bark Timandra was declared lost at sea.



On January 5, 1927, the claim of loss due to actions of German raiders was rejected, as there was no supportive evidence. Neither the logbook of SeaGull nor the war diary of Seeadler contain any reference to a sailing ship that might just be the missing vessel.

The key to this mystery may well be her cargo of coal. Coal is prone to spontaneous combustion.

Either way, it is another of those cases where only a small part of the lost vessel's course was actually in the Bermuda Triangle. Whatever happened to the Timandra may have happened far from the Triangle, yet the sensationalists tacitly assume they can count her as a triangular victim.