Yute

Yute, November 17, 1920.

The Spanish 2,974-ton steamer Yute sailed from Baltimore on November 14, 1920. On November 17, she radioed for help, giving her position as 240 miles off the New Jersey coast, southeast of Cape May. Rescue vessels found no trace of her. (Spencer, p. 108.) She was bound for Dunkirk. ("More Ships Added to Mystery List," The New York Times, June 22, 1921.)

The winter of 1920–21 was one of the worst on record in the North Atlantic. (Winer, Devil's Triangle, pp. 79.)

More details from the time it happened: 

The sixty-mile gale yesterday, accompanied during a part of the day by rain, caused a number of minor accidents on land and sea, and delayed the shipping entering and leaving the harbor, but did not do any serious damage. The United States Weather Bureau records showed that the wind was blowing at fifty-six miles an hour by 10 o'clock yesterday morning, and dropped to forty miles at noon, and reached its maximum of sixty miles velocity at 4 o'clock. Toward night the wind shifted to the northwest and dropped to thirty miles before 8 o'clock. The prospect for today is diminishing northwest winds and fair weather. 

During the forenoon four appeals for aid from ships in distress were received at the Naval Radio Station. The first came from the Spanish freighter Yute, Baltimore to Dunkirk, disabled 240 miles east-southeast of Cape May, NJ. The United Sates Coast Guard cutter Seneca was sent to her assistance finally and towed the Yute into port. ("Storm Winds Blow on Land and on Sea," The New York Times, November 18, 1920.)

Now, that towed into port thing would be a zinger if it was true. But probably the reporter was just rash in assuming that she had been successfully salvaged. After all, the Yute wasn't added to the triangular rolls by Bermuda Triangle writers, but by further newspaper articles and government investigators, which would be less likely to make mistakes than our sensationalist friends.

I'll have to check that with other papers and Lloyd's if I get around to it. Either way, the mystery is solved, as the Yute was damaged or lost, whichever it was, in a storm.

The Yute was one of a number of ships claimed by the Bermuda Triangle in late 1920 and early 1921. The record number of vanishing ships aroused suspicions that Russian reds were hijacking ships and sailing them to soviet ports. When government investigators realized how severe the storms had been, investigations ceased.

While most or all of those ships were probably really storm victims, it is of course not impossible that some ships were hijacked by communists. A correspondent of The Washington Post saw several ships with their names painted out in Vladivostok. (Group, p. 36.) However, I tend to think those may very well have been Russian ships that had their tsarist names painted out, pending renaming with, uh, "good socialist/communist" names.

Finally, those ships not sunk by storms may be victims of insurance fraud.

"The commercial morality of the world seems to have been markedly lowered as a result of the war," said one underwriter today, when asked for an explanation of the situation. "The demand for bottoms after the armistice raised shipping to unprecedented values. Insurance valuations increased correspondingly. Then the slump came and values were lowered and owners faced tremendous losses, but insurance policies continued at an artificially high mark. What we term 'moral risk' naturally increased and sinkings began. That is our notion how it all came about." ("Suggests Storms Sank Lost Mystery Ships," The New York Times, June 24, 1921.)

General Morne

General Morne, October 19, 1920.

The British schooner General Morne sailed from Lisbon, Portugal, for Newfoundland on October 19, 1920, and vanished. (Spencer, p. 108.)

The winter of 1920–21 was one of the worst on record in the North Atlantic. (Winer, Devil's Triangle, pp. 79.) That, however, is quite irrelevant in this case, as her course was not even close to the Bermuda Triangle. If you include the General Morne among the triangular victims, you have to include every ship that ever vanished in the North Atlantic. Thus, whether a storm got her or not, the case is solved for our purposes.

The General Morne was one of a number of ships claimed by the Bermuda Triangle in late 1920 and early 1921. The record number of vanishing ships aroused suspicions that Russian reds were hijacking ships and sailing them to soviet ports. When government investigators realized how severe the storms had been, investigations ceased.

While most or all of those ships were probably really storm victims, it is of course not impossible that some ships were hijacked by communists. A correspondent of The Washington Post saw several ships with their names painted out in Vladivostok. (Group, p. 36.) However, I tend to think those may very well have been Russian ships that had their tsarist names painted out, pending renaming with, uh, "good socialist/communist" names.

Finally, those ships not sunk by storms may be victims of insurance fraud.

"The commercial morality of the world seems to have been markedly lowered as a result of the war," said one underwriter today, when asked for an explanation of the situation. "The demand for bottoms after the armistice raised shipping to unprecedented values. Insurance valuations increased correspondingly. Then the slump came and values were lowered and owners faced tremendous losses, but insurance policies continued at an artificially high mark. What we term 'moral risk' naturally increased and sinkings began. That is our notion how it all came about." ("Suggests Storms Sank Lost Mystery Ships," The New York Times, June 24, 1921.)

E. E. Armstrong

E. E. Armstrong, August 17, 1918. 

The "139-foot Canadian cargo schooner E. E. Armstrong, which left Kingston, Jamaica, British West Indies, on August 17, 1918, in cargo of flour and mangrove bark destined for the French colony of Martinique," allegedly vanished skirting the southern fringe of the Bermuda Triangle. (Quasar, p. 57.) 

Hurricane Two of the 1918 hurricane season, a Category Two hurricane, blew from August 22 to August 26, 1918, affecting the northern coast of South America and the southern Lesser Antilles with tropical storm force winds. If you look at the illustration of the hurricane's track in the Wikipedia article, the storm must have hit the E. E. Armstrong like an oncoming truck. 

USS Cyclops

USS Cyclops, March 5, 1918.

Photographs of the USS Cyclops courtesy of the US Navy.

Maybe the most famous Bermuda Triangle incident is the loss of the USS Cyclops, one of four Proteus-class colliers built for the Navy before World War I. Incredibly, two (!) of her sister ships, the Proteus and the Nereus, vanished in the Bermuda Triangle as well, both in 1941. Only her third sister ship, the USS Jupiter, survived any triangular tribulations, possibly because she escaped from her arduous collier duty when she was converted in 1920 into the first US aircraft carrier, the USS Langley, to be lost in a Japanese air strike on February 27, 1942.

The Cyclops displaced 19,360 tons fully loaded, was 542 feet long and 65 feet wide, drew 27 feet, 8 inches of water, could attain a speed of 15 knots, and had a complement of 236. Although a modern TI Class ultra-large crude carrier displacing 509,484 tons would make them look like toy ships, back then, these ships were among the largest freighters in the world, just as their names implied. (Some passenger liners and battleships were bigger.)

The vanishing of the Cyclops with 306 crew and passengers remains the single largest loss of life in the history of the Navy not directly involving combat. She was also the largest Navy ship to ever vanish without a trace and the first big radio-equipped ship to vanish without an SOS. (Kusche, Bermuda Triangle Mystery, p. 59.)

The fact that all that can be attributed to the Bermuda Triangle gives the triangular mystics a field day. How can there possibly be a rational, naturalistic explanation for the vanishings in the Bermuda Triangle of three out of a class of four freighters, huge for their day, sturdily built to Navy specifications? While all three vanished in wartime (World War I and II respectively), the enemy did not claim or admit to have sunk any of the ships.

To the rationalist, of course, occurs the thought that possibly precisely their almost unprecedented size may have carried the seed of their doom. Whenever the technological envelope is pushed to new and hitherto unknown dimensions, those poorly understood new dimensions may give rise to design flaws in the first, experimental ships of their kind. While liners and battleships of those, and even twice those, dimensions had been built before (the Lusitania, launched in 1906, displaced 44,060 tons), they didn't have to cope with the stresses her heavy cargo exerts on a bulk carrier.

The Cyclops was completed in 1910 by William Cramp and Sons of Philadelphia. Her master was Lieutenant Commander George W. Worley of the Navy Auxiliary Service.

On January 9, 1918, she was assigned to the Naval Overseas Transportation Service and sailed to Brazilian waters to fuel warships in the South Atlantic. One of her two engines broke down, so that she was able to make only ten knots. (Kusche, Bermuda Triangle Mystery, p. 60.)

For those who believe in such things, there were plenty of bad omens on the voyage south. Even if you don't, there was plenty of fodder for conspiracy theorists, too.

Leaving Norfolk Navy Yard, the Cyclops nearly collided with the USS Survey. Then the Cyclops blew a cylinder head, disabling one of her two engines. She overshot Rio de Janeiro and nearly ended up on the rocks. When the executive officer, Lieutenant Forbes, who had plotted the course correctly, challenged Worley as to why Worley had changed it so that the ship headed for the rocks, Worley placed Forbes under arrest. In port, a sailor was drowned when Worley felt an urge to turn over the engine(s) while the sailor's boat was next to the propellers. Coaling, the Cyclops scraped along the side of the cruiser USS Raleigh, causing some damage. (Winer, Devil's Triangle, p. 100.) (Sources disagree on how many engines he could have turned over. Some say one engine remained out of order for the whole voyage, while others claim it was repaired, but later broke down again.)

Captain Worley sure had his detractors and enemies. They described him as an old salt like Captain Bligh (the fictional version), a drunkard who ruled arbitrarily and abused his crew.

Conrad A. Nervig claims he served as an ensign on the Cyclops on her last voyage south to South America and thus became the last man to leave her alive when he was transferred to the USS Glacier in Brazil. He calls Worley "a very indifferent seaman and a poor, overly cautious navigator." Nervig blames all of the above incidents on Worley's poor navigation and seamanship. (Winer, Devil's Triangle, p. 100.)

It should, however, be noted that there are doubts whether Nervig really was on board on that voyage. As at least some of these alleged incidents appear to originate with Nervig, they should be taken with a shaker of salt unless and until they can be independently verified. Quasar claims he couldn't find Nervig on any crew documents and sounds pretty convinced he was not on board. (Quasar, p. 60.) "And the idea that he is somehow omitted by accident, that somehow he is overlooked in every page, is patently ridiculous." Yet, qua mystic, Quasar has a history of casting doubt on anyone who offers a rational explanation for a Bermuda Triangle mystery.

Among yarn spinners, Worley has become (in)-famous for parading around the ship wearing long underwear, a derby hat on his head, and a cane in his hand. Yet this apparently originates with Nervig, who claims Worley kept visiting him in this getup during Nervig's dog watches. (Winer, Devil's Triangle, p. 99.) It would thus not be that strange for Worley to be in his underwear when he couldn't sleep and got up for a chat, in tropical nights and at a time of night when few crewmen except Nervig — the officer he trusted — and a helmsman or so would be likely to see him on the short way from his cabin below the bridge up to the bridge proper. Back then, most people would never go anywhere bareheaded, and Worley seems to have been attached to his cane, his only attribute of a gentleman.

On the voyage home, the Cyclops had to transport five convicts: two deserters and three who had been involved in a murder on the cruiser USS Pittsburgh. In addition, forty-two men from the Pittsburgh were sent Stateside on the Cyclops for reassignment. Some of them were said to be friends of those convicted in connection with the murder. Rumors were flying about the Cyclops: James Coker, the murderer from the Pittsburgh, would be transferred to the Cyclops for his execution; their friends would mutiny to free his accomplices; the crew would mutiny to free Lieutenant Forbes; Worley was going insane. (Winer, Devil's Triangle, pp. 100.)

The Cyclops sailed from Rio de Janeiro on February 16, 1918. When the Glacier was anchored in Salvador, Bahia, Nervig saw the Cyclops one last time. However, he saw the latter enter the harbor from the north, not from the south, as she should, coming from Rio. For Nervig, another example of Worley's stellar navigational skills, overshooting another harbor — "navigation as practiced aboard that vessel." (Winer, Devil's Triangle, p. 108.)

Then, US Consul General Alfred L.M. Gottschalk boarded the Cyclops for his trip Stateside. (Winer, Devil's Triangle, p. 109.) He claimed he would enlist to fight in the war. Yet before the war he had been strongly pro-German, and he was of German ancestry. (Winer, Devil's Triangle, p. 121.)

Did Gottschalk finally decide to side with America against his ancestral country? Or was he planning to sabotage the Cyclops, or even to turn her over to the Germans?

The Cyclops had orders to sail from Salvador on February 22. (Winer, Devil's Triangle, p. 108.) Worley had orders to proceed directly to Baltimore. The Cyclops had been supplied with more than enough coal and provisions to get her there. Yet Worley stopped over in Bridgetown, Barbados, on March 3 and 4. (Winer, Devil's Triangle, pp. 111.)

What happened next, the US consul in Barbados describes in this telegram:

Secretary of State,

Washington, D. C.

April 17, 2 p. m.

Department's 15th. Confidential. Master CYCLOPS stated that required six hundred tons coal having sufficient on board to reach Bermuda. Engines very poor condition. Not sufficient funds and therefore requested payment by me. Unusually reticent. I have ascertained he took here ton fresh meat, ton flour, thousand pounds vegetables, paying therefor 775 dollars. From different sources gather the following: He had plenty of coal, alleged inferior, took coal to mix, probably he had more than fifteen hundred tons. Master alluded to by others as damned Dutchman, apparently disliked by other officers. Rumored disturbances en route hither, men confined and one executed; also had some prisoners from the fleet in Brazilian waters, one life sentence. United States Consul-General Gottschalk passenger, 231 crew exclusive of officers and passengers. Have names crew but not of all the officers and passengers. Many Germanic names appear. Number telegraphic or wireless messages addressed to master or in care of ship were delivered at this port. All telegrams for Barbadoes on file head office St. Thomas. I have to suggest scrutiny there. While not having any definite grounds I fear fate worse than sinking though possibly based on instinctive dislike felt towards master.

LIVINGSTON,

CONSUL.

If Worley had indeed executed a crewman, he was in deep trouble. On the other hand, this rumor may be based on a misunderstanding involving the aforementioned rumor that Coker, the murderer, was to be transferred to the Cyclops for his execution.

Dutchman, of course, in those days didn't mean a native of the Netherlands, but a German, just like kraut or Hun. Dutch would be a corruption of Deutsch, the German word for German.

Worley was on record with the Navy as born in San Francisco, but it later transpired that he was born Johann Friedrich Georg Wichmann in Germany and entered the US as an undocumented immigrant when he jumped ship in San Francisco in 1878. In port, he'd hang out with German merchant ship captains, even once he commanded the Cyclops. (Winer, Devil's Triangle, p. 116.) Did Worley need the extra coal and food for a run to Germany, or at least to a rendezvous with a German ship?

Given Worley's and Gottschalk's questionable loyalties and the presence of the "many Germanic names" on the Cyclops, the Navy half expected to find her in a German port after the war. Right after the armistice, Navy investigators were sent to check the German navy files, but it was found that the Cyclops had never arrived in Germany and that no U-boats, surface raiders, or mines had been near her course. (Winer, Devil's Triangle, p. 117.)

On the other hand, capturing the Cyclops would appear to be a secret mission, not for the German navy, but for their secret service, so that it would not appear in their navy files, but in their secret service files, which would be, like, secret. Or the Germans may have doctored their navy files. (I guess this is like the young earth fundies' argument that their god faked the fossil record.) Winer holds that if so, word of the operation would have leaked eventually, but that's not certain. In any event, there is no hard evidence either way.

Brockholst Livingston III, the consul's young son, later told how the Cyclops left the harbor steaming south, instead of north, as she should have. (Winer, Devil's Triangle, p. 113.) This might mean everything or nothing. Mistaking south for north may have been the most egregious example yet of "navigation as practiced aboard that vessel." Or it may have been Worley's barefaced getaway, ship and all, to escape punishment for murdering that hypothetical crewman, or to hand the ship over to the Germans. Or it may have been just a compass test. (Winer, Devil's Triangle, p. 116.)

Sources disagree on whether the Cyclops was bound for Norfolk or Baltimore. Her course on the ocean would have been the same either way, though, as both cities are located on Chesapeake Bay. (Kusche, Bermuda Triangle Mystery, p. 53.)

The next day, March 5, the Cyclops was in radio contact with the liner Vestris and reported fair weather. Afterwards, the Cyclops was never seen or heard from again in this world. She was reported overdue on March 13. (Winer, Devil's Triangle, p. 113.)

Quasar claims the Cyclops was twice encountered by a British patrol boat over the two days after leaving Barbados. Both times she was off course, and both times the patrol boat guided her back on course. (Quasar, p. 58.) If that is true, was that more evidence of "navigation as practiced aboard that vessel," or was it Worley trying to make a run for Germany?

The Office of Naval Intelligence listed the six main theories that had been suggested:

(1) The crew mutinied and absconded with the ship.

(2) Gottschalk handed the ship over to the Germans.

(3) The Cyclops was torpedoed by a U-boat.

(4) The cargo of potentially highly incendiary manganese dioxide exploded.

(5) The Cyclops sank due to excessive stresses from rolling.

(6) Worley surrendered the ship to the Germans or was part of a conspiracy to destroy her by U-boat.

However, the Navy could find no hard evidence for any of the theories. (Kusche, Bermuda Triangle Mystery, p. 56.)

In 1920, Lieutenant Commander Mahlon S. Tisdale, who had served on the Cyclops and other Navy colliers, came forward to claim that the Cyclops had capsized. When he was on board the Cyclops, Tisdale had noticed that all the manhole plates on the topside tanks were open. When he reported that to Worley, the latter laughed and replied that he always left them off, in accordance with instructions from the navy yard. If the Cyclops sailed into bad weather, the cargo may have shifted, the ship heeled over, and the sea rushed into the open tanks, capsizing the ship without leaving any debris or any time for an SOS.

Commander I.I. Yates of the Norfolk Navy Yard, on the other hand, held that Worley, a known jokester, pulled Tisdale's leg. When Tisdale discovered the manhole covers were open, the Cyclops was in light condition, so it didn't matter whether they were on or off. In fact, the topside tanks were probably full of ballast water at that point. According to Yates, there were no such orders from the navy yard, and Worley wouldn't have sailed with a loaded ship with the covers open. (Kusche, Bermuda Triangle Mystery, pp. 56.)

Other sailors thought that the Cyclops' top-heavy superstructure of coal loading derricks may have slowed her righting herself in heavy seas, causing the cargo to shift and the ship to capsize. In fact, a high-density cargo like ore that only partly fills holds would be more likely to shift than lighter cargo that completely fills holds. (Kusche, Bermuda Triangle Mystery, p. 58.)

Nervig said in 1969 that he thought the ship had broken in two, as he claimed that she had been working so heavily that one could hear the sound of steel plates rubbing together and see the deck amidships rising and falling as it conformed to the contours of the sea.

This problem may have been exacerbated if she was improperly loaded by an inexperienced officer who concentrated all the cargo in the amidships holds. However, the Cyclops was apparently loaded under the personal supervision of Captain Worley and of foreman Manuel Pereira of the Brazilian Coaling Company, who had many years experience. According to Pereira, the ship could have safely carried an additional 2,000 tons, and the cargo had been properly trimmed throughout the ship. (Kusche, Bermuda Triangle Mystery, pp. 58.)

Winer, however, claims that the Plimsoll mark was under water and the Cyclops thus dangerously overloaded. I guess he got that from Nervig, apparently his main source. (Winer, Devil's Triangle, p. 107.)

Captain Charles H. Zearfoss of the Munson Line offered another, but related, explanation:

I think the Cyclops was sunk by her cargo. Manganese is a very difficult cargo to handle and the collier's crew was used to handling only coal. It has a tendency to settle down, grinding away whatever is below it. The Cyclops was not a 'tween deck ship and the cargo was loaded in the lower hold. I think the end came suddenly when the bottom practically dropped out. (Winer, Devil's Triangle, p. 118.)

According to Winer, manganese ore needs extra shoring and bracing to keep that from happening. Yet the only man aboard the Cyclops who knew how to load manganese ore was Forbes, as he had worked on Lakers, specializing in transporting heavy ores. But Forbes was still confined to quarters thanks to Worley's irrationality, so the story goes. (Winer, Devil's Triangle, p. 106.)

The fact that the Cyclops was loaded under the personal supervision of Worley and Pereira would be irrelevant for this theory. Worley was the captain of a collier, and Pereira worked for the Brazilian Coaling Company, so they while they were qualified to load coal, they didn't necessarily have experience with manganese ore.

Winer doubts that the bottom would have dropped out of all holds at once. Yet he ignores the fact that not all holds would have to be flooded to sink the ship. I could quit my day job if I had a dollar for every ship, from the Republic and the Titanic down, that the papers claimed was nearly unsinkable on account of having x watertight compartments, of which y could be flooded for the ship to remain afloat, where nobody could imagine any possible accident damaging more than y compartments, and that then had a freak accident open y+1 compartments to the sea and went down like a stone (Republic: x=8, y=2; Titanic: x=16, y=4).

In defense of his capsizing theory, Tisdale adds:

Perhaps the cargo was braced to prevent shifting — but this would have required very strong braces, far beyond the capacity of the ship's carpenter. Unless these braces were installed at the loading port, they were probably not installed at all. (Winer, Devil's Triangle, p. 119.)

This would be as relevant to the grinding theory. Winer is confident that Worley would have installed at least some sort of braces and that, as far as capsizing is concerned, they wouldn't all have given way at the same time, so that there would have been time for an SOS and for the lifeboats. (Winer, Devil's Triangle, p. 120.) Given how Winer's own Nervig rags Worley, that's a lot of confidence.

In 1968, a Navy diver, Dean Hawes, was looking for the lost nuclear submarine USS Scorpion. On the seafloor he found a ship that had the same strange superstructure as the Cyclops: a bridge supported on steel stilts, and uprights all along the deck that may have been her trademark derricks. The location of the wreck was 70 miles east of Norfolk, in 180 feet of water. Hawes had to surface before he could explore her, however, and his ship was driven from the scene by bad weather. (Kusche, Bermuda Triangle Mystery, pp. 59.)

Anyway, everybody knew that the weather had been fine, so all those theories that were predicated on bad weather and heavy seas, like capsizing or breaking apart, had to be wrong. Right?

Kusche calculated that with the speed she could get out of her one operational engine, the Cyclops would have been off Norfolk on the night of March 10. While for decades, every investigator and researcher had believed that the weather had not been bad enough to sink the Cyclops, he found out that at that time there had in fact been a bad storm off the East Coast.

On March 9, gale warnings had been issued from Maine to North Carolina by 5 PM. Wind speeds reached 60 miles an hour on the tenth, and 84 miles an hour was recorded in New York City. The gale warnings now extended south to Florida.

The steamer Amolco, 375 miles northeast of Norfolk, had to ride out the storm from noon of March 9 to the afternoon of March 11, suffering $150,000 worth of damage. One of her officers, W.J. Riley, told The Virginian-Pilot that he was sure the Cyclops had been sunk by that storm. Here, for your online perusal, is the same story from The Washington Times. ("Cyclops Lost in Great Gale, Says Mate of Amolco," The Washington Times, April 19, 1918, p. 11.)

The Navy was looking for the ship in the West Indies, where she had been heard from last, spring storms were nothing unusual, and this storm had been worse at sea than on land, so that it wasn't widely reported. News of the storm and Officer Riley's statement were quickly forgotten and never caught the attention of Navy or other investigators.

In fact, as the Navy was busy fighting World War I, there never was an official inquiry into the loss of the Cyclops. If there had been one, the weather reports would certainly have been discovered, and the loss of the Cyclops would never have been considered a mystery. (Kusche, Bermuda Triangle Mystery, pp. 60.)

I can't give all the details of Kusche's calculations and the weather reports here, so if you want more evidence, read his book.

Quasar, as always, is busy denying everything Kusche discovered.

His "meticulous research" led to his overlooking the 1,500 papers amassed on the USS Cyclops and the ten-year search and investigation, contained in such unimaginable repositories as the National Archives (boxes 1068–1070, Modern Military Branch). His desire to solve it based on his own hunches led to a statement that could make even Ripley sit up and blink: "I confidently decided that the newspapers, the Navy, and all the ships at sea had been wrong, and that there had been a storm near Norfolk that day strong enough to sink the ship." The documents at the National Archives and Records Administration make it clear there was no storm. Yet Kusche wrote: "Contrary to popular opinion, there never was an official inquiry into the disappearance… Had there been any investigation, the weather information would surely have been discovered." He claimed there was a storm on March 10 off the Virginia capes. But throughout his entire recital he never mentioned the Cyclops's ETA at Baltimore on March 13. If he had, his wishful storm of March 10 would have been exposed as long before the Cyclops was even due off the Capes.

In the final analysis the acrimony he directed at others can be returned to him. His solutions were based merely on faulty newspaper articles, elastic conclusions there from, and on the whole trying to explain away why there was no debris or SOS. Combined with his inability (or reluctance) to even travel near the Triangle, his research was no more informed than anybody who browses their Daily Blatt during their morning coffee. (Quasar, pp. 93.)

And… The acrimony falls back right where it belongs, to Quasar, the mystic and sensationalist.

The records of the Weather Bureau and the reports from the Amolco prove that there was a storm. If "documents at the National Archives and Records Administration" claim otherwise, they are mistaken. Who should know it better, the National Archives and Records Administration, or the Weather Bureau and a ship that actually was in that storm?

This, by the way, from Quasar, who faults Kusche for relying on archival records instead of hanging around the Triangle. Apparently, to Quasar the relative value of archival records and firsthand reports varies according to how useful they are in prolonging the existence of triangular mysteries.

Kusche said only that there never was an official investigation. He didn't say the Navy had no files on the case. Whether he read all the Navy files on the case, I don't know. But his claim that there was no official investigation doesn't prove he didn't. Likewise, the existence of those files doesn't mean that there was any official, systematic Navy investigation that extended to checking weather records.

Quasar's criticism of Kusche as a manic debunker, however, collapses completely with a link from the Wikipedia article on the Cyclops to a June 1929 article in Popular Science by one Alfred P. Reck that makes all of Kusche's major points and more. (Reck, Alfred P. "Strangest American Sea Mystery is Solved at Last." Popular Science (June 1929) 15–17.) I can't find a citation in Kusche's book, so either both came up with the same theory independently, corroborating it, or Kusche is guilty of plagiarism, but not mania. I can't imagine a writer of Kusche's stature committing plagiarism, but find it equally hard to believe that as a research librarian he could have missed that article.

Hmm… Looking over Kusche's chapter, it looks to me like he found only the The Virginian-Pilot coverage, indeed. I guess he didn't have the benefits of the internet and Google Books. Had he had those tools back in the seventies, he'd probably have truly kicked the shit out of the Bermuda Triangle.

(By the way, Reck is a great name for a writer on a shipwreck, isn't it?) Reck, like Quasar, went through the Navy files — and reached diametrically opposite conclusions.

(1) The Cyclops was heavily overloaded. She could carry 8,000 tons of coal, but was carrying 10,835 tons of ore and 4,000 tons of water. Her maximum deadweight (combined weight of cargo, ballast water, fresh water, fuel, provisions, passengers, and crew) was 14,500 tons. She was over that from cargo and water alone, not even counting fuel and the other items.

(With coal, which would be loaded by volume, there was no way to overload her. At 8,000 tons of coal, her holds were full. But as ore is much heavier than coal, she could already be overloaded with ore when there was still empty space in her holds, something coal handlers like Worley and Pereira may not have realized, or they realized it, but being unused to loading by weight, miscalculated the resulting deadweight.)

(2) The ore cargo had very probably not been trimmed level, but left higher in the middle, just asking for it to shift in a storm. (By the way, the cargo had been placed on wood dunnage, which seems to rule out the "grinding out the bottom" theory, if the dunnage was thick enough.)

(3) According to Worley's complaint to the Navy, most of his crew consisted of raw recruits.

(4) The molasses tanker Amolco (spelled Amalco in the article) passed the Cyclops off the Virginia Capes at a distance of five miles on the evening of March 9, according to the tanker's log.

(5) According to the same log and to Weather Bureau records, there was a severe storm off the Virginia Capes on March 10. It was the heaviest storm the captain of the Amolco, C.E. Hilliard, had ever experienced. The waves almost sank his ship.

(6) The captain of the Amolco was positive that the Cyclops must have foundered in that storm: " 'If I had been carrying manganese ore,' Captain Hilliard reported, 'I could not have survived the gale.' "

(7) The storm was not widely known due to wartime restrictions on ships' weather reports.

(8) There was no SOS sent because U-boats were feared to be in the area. An SOS would have been as likely to attract the enemy as rescuers.

One slap of such a giant wave, and the Cyclops doubtless keeled over. Once on her side, the shifting cargo and the weighty superstructure would have prevented the vessel from righting herself, and she must have dropped like a huge steel weight to the bottom of the ocean. This explains why no lifeboat or even as much as a spar of the ship was ever found.

Josephus Daniels, Secretary of the Navy at the time the Cyclops vanished, endorsed the solution offered in Reck's article.

QED. This, I think, merits a promotion of this case to "solved" status.

The so-called mystery of the Cyclops had been solved before the Bermuda Triangle was invented. Kusche solved it again, and now the latter-day mystics are trying to muddy the waters once more.

Any serious researcher independently reaches the conclusion that the Cyclops perished in that storm. Any attempt to deny that amounts to recalculating her speed so that she would have been ahead of or behind the storm, preferably both at the same time.

Weather can also be ruled out. The only rough weather were high winds off Cape Hatteras on the 10th of March, but they dissipated the next day. Cyclops should not have been around there yet, being due on the 13th. Her engine had been fixed, regardless of popular rumor, so she was not traveling on one engine but was making normal speed.

This is truly mind boggling. On the one hand, the Cyclops was behind the storm, as she was not due before the thirteenth. On the other hand, she was ahead of the storm, as her other engine had been fixed and she was now faster.

Apparently, to a true mystic a ship can be at the same time ahead of and behind a storm. As long as she is not in the storm, as that would allow for a naturalistic explanation of the "mystery" of her vanishment.

And that's ahead of and/or behind a storm that raged along the whole East Coast, not just "off the Virginia Capes" or "off the Carolinas." There were storm warnings all the way down to Florida, and Reck's article is accompanied by a map prepared by the Weather Bureau, from reports of vessels on March 10, that shows that the storm stretched all the way from Canada down to the sea off Florida, almost to The Bahamas.

Finally, Quasar apparently got the March 13 ETA from Worley. As we know by now, if Nervig can be trusted, Worley's ETAs cannot — they were based on "navigation as practiced aboard that vessel."

However, on March 3, 1918, Worley sent a surprising message: "Arrived Barbados, West Indies, 1730 [5.30 P.M.] for bunker coal. Arrive Baltimore, Md, 12013 [March 13,]. Notify Office Director Naval Auxiliaries, Comdr. Train (Atl), 07004. CYCLOPS."

I have not yet seen the Navy's files on this case, but given that Reck and Quasar both examined them and arrived at diametrically opposed conclusions, one of them has got some explaining to do. Given that Reck was a serious researcher looking for a "natural and logical" explanation and that Quasar is a mystic that at every turn uses the utmost sophistry to rule out any naturalistic explanation that would destroy one of his triangular pet mysteries, I have a hunch who has got the explaining to do. I guess the most charitable assumption is that the Navy disposed of some important files in the intervening eighty years.

But what about her two sister ships, the Proteus and the Nereus, which also vanished in the Bermuda Triangle? If three out of four ships of a class vanish, what does that suggest?

To the mystic, it suggests that the Martians consider this class collectible. To the rationalist, it suggests that this class suffered from a constructional flaw, possibly in conjunction with corrosion from acidic coal cargo and unusual stresses from the heavy ore cargos none of the colliers was designed for, but every one of them was carrying on her final voyage.

"Has it occurred to you that there are too many clues in this room?"

— Hercule Poirot, Murder on the Orient Express

Again, as we among others have seen in the case of the Mary Celeste and will see in the cases of the Carroll A. Deering and the Marine Sulphur Queen, there are too many possible naturalistic solutions, not too few. If the sensationalists and mystics want to show that there are any Martians, Atlanteans, or other paranormal powers in the Bermuda Triangle, as statistics don't bear it out, either they have to find a case where the Martians beamed up a ship under the eyes of witnesses with quality cameras, or they have to find a case for which no rational explanation is possible. Yet all their best mysteries have too many, not too few, possible rational explanations.

Thus, the mystics are out from the get-go. The question is not whether the solution is naturalistic or paranormal. The question is which naturalistic solution to the mystery in question is true: In the case of the Cyclops, some sort of treason, or some combination of overloading / careless loading / structural failure / cargo shifting / capsizing / bad weather. What is left to the mystics is to try and dismiss each reasonable explanation over a weak and sophistic objection, until they are left in ignorance, in the awe and horror of the paranormal and supernatural they crave.

Brown Brothers

Brown Brothers, November 13, 1916.

The bark Brown Bros. was lost (vanished?) east of Savannah, Georgia, with a company of twelve. (Berlitz, Without a Trace, p. 23.)

LONDON, March 21. — The American bark Brown Brothers has been posted as overdue.

The Brown Brothers sailed from Brunswick on Nov. 13 last for Troon, Scotland. She was last reported as having been spoken on Dec. 16 about midway between the Newfoundland Banks and the Azores. The bark, of 870 tons gross, is owned by the American Shipping company of Brunswick, GA. ("Names Americans Lost on Vigilancia," The New York Times, March 22, 1917.)

The American barks Brown Brothers and Manga Reva and the Swedish barkBarden have been posted as missing at the New York Maritime Exchange on receipt of a cable dispatch from Lloyd's, London.

The Brown Brothers sailed from Brunswick on Nov. 15, 1916, bound for Troon. She was a vessel of 870 gross tons, and was built in Haugesund, Norway, in 1875.

…

("Three Vessels Missing," The New York Times, March 29, 1917.)

So she was way out of the Bermuda Triangle when she was last seen. East of Savannah, Georgia, my ass. More like way east.

Whatever mystery it may be, it is no Bermuda Triangle mystery. Thus, for our purposes, it is solved.

Chicopee

Chicopee, September 29, 1915.

The "schooner Chicopee, 55 tons, last reported in the Gulf of Mexico on September 29, 1915, heading toward the Triangle," allegedly vanished there. (Quasar, p. 56.)

According to the Monthly Weather Review, there was a hurricane over the Gulf of Mexico on September 29. The New Orleans Hurricane of 1915.

Executive summary:

The sixth and final storm of the year was first seen just west of the Lesser Antilles on September 22. It tracked through the Caribbean, strengthening to its peak of 145 mph (230 km/h) on September 25. On September 29, it made landfall near Grand Isle as a strong Category 3 hurricane.

A barometric reading of 951 mbar (28.11 inHg) was at the time the lowest ever measured on land in the United States. The storm caused severe flooding and killed 275 people, a number possibly reduced to well-executed warnings. Winds tore off roofs and damaged buildings in New Orleans, where pressure was measured at down to 28.01" and a wind speed of 98 mph. Generations in south east Louisiana would refer to it as the Great Storm of 1915. Property damage in Louisiana was estimated at $13 million (1915 USD, $239 million in 2005 USD), with $5 million of that in the city of New Orleans.

Our 55-ton ocean liner was probably reduced to toothpicks.

QED.

Bertha L. Basker

Bertha L. Basker, April 1915.

The freighter Bertha L. Basker was lost (vanished?) on a journey from New York to St. Martin. (Berlitz, Without a Trace, p. 23.)

In 1916 the Lejuez family received the sad news that James Edwin Lejuez and his wife Adelaide Beatrice van Gurp lost their lives when their ship, the American schooner Bertha L. Basker, which left New York for St. Maarten on April 7, 1916, was lost at sea.

So much for Berlitz' date. And a schooner. Some freighter, huh? Technically, of course, a schooner can be a freighter, but I bet most people think of a big old steamer when they hear freighter, and I bet that's what Berlitz wanted, as his series of lost schooners was beginning to look boring and non-mysterious.

Anyway, what might have happened to the schooner Bertha L. Basker in April 1916?

WASHINGTON, April 8. — The yacht Mayflower, which left here last evening with the President and Mrs. Wilson on board, returned to the Washington Navy Yard at 4:30 o'clock this afternoon. … The abandonment of the trip was due to a heavy storm which came up the coast in the night and made it uncomfortable on the yacht.

…

("Wilson Abandons Cruise," The New York Times, April 9, 1916.)

QED.

Fitz J. Babson

Fitz J. Babson, February 27, 1914.

The schooner Fitz J. Babson was lost (vanished?) east of Jacksonville, Florida, with a company of seven. (Berlitz, Without a Trace, p. 23.)

WASHINGTON, March 1. — The storm which swept New York and the surrounding country to-day originated off the Georgia Coast yesterday and traversed the Atlantic Coast from Savannah to Long Island. Prof. Edward H. Bowie, forecaster in charge of the United States Weather Bureau, said the storm was central over Long Island and New York City to-night, and that it would pass through the New England States and off into the St. Lawrence Valley.

Many wires were down, and for this reason the Weather Bureau was without complete reports from its observers to-night, but such dispatches as were received by the forecaster showed that the storm was central off Georgia yesterday, that it passed Cape Hatteras to-day, and was central over Long Island to-night.

"I have been unable to have telegraphic communication with New York City to-night," Prof. Bowie said. "Such advices as we had from that city came by long-distance telephone. The wind at New York City to-night was blowing at seventy-two miles an hour, and had shifted to the northwest. The message from New York said that the barometric reading there to-night was 28.38. I question this figure, because it is abnormally low, and we have been trying to verify it. About 30 would be more like a normal reading of the barometer. If the barometer is anything like 28.38 it is about the lowest ever recorded in New York.

…

"We also issued a warning to all vessels along the Atlantic Coast not to venture from port on account of the severity of the gale. The wind blew sixty miles an hour yesterday at Savannah. The storm passed rapidly up the coast, whirling violently as it proceeded. When these southern coast storms whirl like this they make rapid headway up the coast and increase in intensity. There is every indication that this whirling storm was not less than 1,000 miles in diameter. The storm covered a wide area as it moved northward. Our reports indicate heavy storms in New York and Pennsylvania.

…

("Started off Georgia Coast," The New York Times, March 2, 1914.)

WASHINGTON, March 2. — The severest storm of the winter raged to-day from Eastport, ME, to Savannah, GA, while a cold wave, rolling down from the Great Lakes country, overspread the Atlantic States as far south as Florida. Lowest temperatures ever recorded in March were registered in Charleston and Macon and other points in the Southeast.

…

("Storm Zone from Maine to Georgia," The New York Times, March 3, 1914.)

The Fitz J. Babson sailed (or was lost?) on or around February 27, 1914. The storm originated on February 28. Check.

The Fitz J. Babson was lost (vanished?) east of Jacksonville, Florida. The storm originated off the Georgia Coast. Check.

QED.

Update: According to Singer, February 27 was the day the Fitz J. Babson left Jacksonville. At 69 tons, she wasn't exactly an ocean liner, either. (Singer, p. 227.)

USS Nina

USS Nina, March 15, 1910.

The USS Nina was an iron screw steamer built for the US Navy in 1865. She spent much of her life as a tugboat, though she also served as a torpedo boat, a torpedo boat tender, and a submarine tender.

On March 15, 1910, the navy tug, USS Nina, departed Norfolk Navy Yard. She was bound for Havana, Cuba, where she was to serve as one of the support ships during the salvage operation of the battleship Maine. The tug was seen off Savannah, Georgia, steaming south. She was never seen or heard from again. She was the first steam-powered navy vessel to disappear in the "Devil's Triangle." (Winer, Devil's Triangle, p. 66.)

Berlitz calls her the first steamship to vanish in the Bermuda Triangle, deservedly not counting the City of Glasgow and the City of Boston, and gives the same position. (Berlitz, Without a Trace, p. 22.)

And this is where the story begins to fall apart.

Iron screw steamer USS Nina, last sighted off the Capes of the Chesapeake in a gale. 33 drowned. 15 Mar. 1910.

As usual, the sensationalists got the position wrong and forgot to mention the storm. The course was wrong, too:

At 0630, 6 February 1910, Nina departed Norfolk for Boston and was last sighted off the Capes of the Chesapeake in the midst of a gale. She was never heard from again. The warship was declared lost and struck from the Navy List 15 March 1910, the 30 crewmen and one officer on board being listed as having died on that day. Her loss is one of the continuing mysteries of the sea.

But it is not a mystery. At least not anymore. Her wreck has been found and is a popular dive site now. And as her wreck lies off the Delaware coast, Winer and Berlitz were indeed wrong re course and position.

If a ship is seen vanishing in a storm and the wreck is later found sitting on the bottom of the sea, that is not a mystery, no how, no, sir, no way. Occam's razor.

This explains why the likes of Winer and Berlitz cannot solve any mysteries. It's not that they lack pencil-thin mustaches. It's as The Donald would say: location, location, location.

If they would spend more time in the library and less time with photos ops on their yachts on "expeditions," they'd find some wrecks and could solve some mysteries, too.

Freya

Freya, October 4, 1902.

On October 3, 1902, the German bark Freya left Manzanillo, Cuba, for Punta Arenas, Chile. On October 23, the Freya was discovered partly dismasted, lying on her side, and derelict. Her anchor was still hanging free at her bow, so whatever had struck the ship had struck soon after the ship left port, before the crew had time to secure the anchor. The date on the calendar in the captain's cabin confirmed this; it still showed October 4. Weather reports show that there were only light winds at that time. (Berlitz, Bermuda Triangle, p. 55.)

This case is well documented in Nature. It really did, it happened just this way — give or take a lie or two. (Kusche, Bermuda Triangle Mystery, pp. 47.)

The Freya did not depart Manzanillo, Cuba. She departed Manzanillo, Mexico, which is located on the Pacific coast of Mexico.

So whatever mystery it is, it is not a Bermuda Triangle mystery. Not even close. Not even the right ocean.

The Bermuda Triangle sensationalists simply and disingenuously omitted the "Mexico" from "Manzanillo, Mexico," or even replaced it with "West Indies" or "Cuba."

As for the solution, that's where the other lie or omission comes in. The Nature article is titled "The Mexican Earthquake" and mentions the Freya as the victim of a seaquake. ("The Mexican Earthquake," Nature, April 25, 1907, p. 610.)

Miramon

Miramon, 1884.

"The Italian schooner Miramon, bound for New Orleans, vanishes in the Bermuda Triangle." (Nash, p. 367.) Some call her the Miramonde. (Sanderson, p. 124.)

Kusche could not find any records that this ship vanished in the Bermuda Triangle, vanished outside the Triangle, or even existed in the first place. (Kusche, Bermuda Triangle Mystery, p. 46.)

Viego

Viego, 1868.

"The Spanish merchant ship Viego vanishes in the Bermuda Triangle." (Nash, p. 362.)

Kusche could not find any records that this ship vanished in the Bermuda Triangle, vanished outside the Triangle, or even existed in the first place. (Kusche, Bermuda Triangle Mystery, p. 46.)

Lotta

Lotta, March 1866.

"The Swedish bark Lotta bound for Havana from Göteborg disappears in the Bermuda Triangle north of Haiti." (Nash, p. 362.)

Kusche could not find any records that this ship vanished in the Bermuda Triangle, vanished outside the Triangle, or even existed in the first place. (Kusche, Bermuda Triangle Mystery, p. 46.)

James B. Chester

James B. Chester, February 28, 1855.

Sometimes erroneously referred to as the James Cheston. (Group, pp. 22.)

On February 28, 1855, in the general vicinity of the Azores, the crew of the merchantman Marathon sighted the bark James B. Chester. The bark was sailing erratically, as if no one was at the helm, and did not answer hails.

Mate Thomas boarded her and found her deserted, as if in a great hurry. The cabins had evidently been ransacked: Tables and chairs were overturned and clothes and books lying around. The ship's papers and compass were missing, but the wool cargo and provisions were still there.

The captain of the Marathon had a prize crew take the Chester to the Albert Docks in Liverpool. There the Chester became a spooky tourist attraction.

There was a lot of speculation as to what had happened to the crew of the Chester on the lonely expanse of the Atlantic, but every theory met with objections. Pirates or mutiny might explain the chaos on board, but what about the lack of blood? The crew might have looted the ship, but what was missing was not really worth abandoning a ship for an open boat in the middle of the ocean. Some said a giant octopus might have gotten the crew and ransacked the cabins in the process, which usually serves as the springboard for the mystics to suggest that then the Atlanteans might have gotten them just as well. (Snow, Mysteries and Adventures Along the Atlantic Coast, pp. 308.)

Some claim that none of the boats were missing. (Chaplin, p. 32.)

Group specifies that the three-masted bark James B. Chester was found some 1,100 kilometers southwest of the Azores.

Could the crew have so misjudged the condition of the ship as to take to the lifeboats in a storm? Or had some unknown terror driven the crew overboard?

Group found the answer in the archives of The New York Times. It had in vain been waiting there to be found by any sensationalist writer who cared to do a thorough search.

April 3: The news that the Marathon found the Chester reaches New York. The cargo is valued at $150,000. Someone tried to bore holes into the hull. Two out of three boats were missing. It is believed that the crew murdered the captain and fled. Another article on the same page reports that the crew of the James Cheston [sic] was picked up by the Two Friends on March 15.

April 6: The owners are notified that the captain arrived in Wilmington, Delaware.

April 10: Eight crewmembers of the Chester disembarked the Dutch ship Two Friends in Savannah on April 7 and were arrested for murder.

April 11: Two crewmembers testify that the captain was sick, bored holes into the hull with the mates, and offered hush money to other crewmembers. One sailor states there was only one foot of water in the hold, not seven as the log claims. Captain White of the Chester arrives in Boston and denies any knowledge of the holes in the hull and asserts the crew abandoned the ship because she was in danger of sinking.

April 12: Captain White and the Mates Chason and Packwood are arrested for barratry. Six crewmembers testify that there was only one foot of water in the hold and that nothing else was wrong with the ship. The article hints that rum may be to blame for the whole affair.

April 13: The two mates accuse the captain of unnecessarily abandoning the ship, as there was only one foot of water in the hold and she was seaworthy. A crewman calls the voyage a "Bacchanalian frolic."

Bella

Bella, April 6, 1854.

According to Berlitz, the Bella was a schooner abandoned in the West Indies. (Berlitz, Without a Trace, p. 21.)

As Kusche observes, this case originates with Harold Wilkins (Wilkins, Strange Mysteries of Time and Space, pp. 7.), who did not give any sources. The London Times and standard works on shipwrecks don't mention the Bella. Lloyd's confirms she existed, built in Liverpool in 1852 and bound for Brazil, but doesn't mention any accident. (Kusche, Bermuda Triangle Mystery, pp. 28.)

The "strange mystery of time and space" Wilkins means is not the Bermuda Triangle. It is rather the Roger Tichborne mystery. Tichborne was lost with the Bella, and the mystery was an imposter claiming to be him.

Wilkins writes that the Bella was overloaded to the point that her cabin furniture was stowed on deck to make room for cargo. She was bound for Kingston, Jamaica. Six days after the Bella had sailed from Rio de Janeiro, another ship found wreckage on her presumed course, including an overturned long boat marked, "Bella, Liverpool." The night before the wreckage was found, the weather had been gusty, but not stormy.

Although Wilkins does not mention where the wreckage was found, Kusche calculates that in six days the Bella could not have sailed farther than Cape San Roque.

So whatever happened to the Bella, as far as the Bermuda Triangle is concerned, the mystery is solved: She met her fate in the South Atlantic, far from the Triangle. This is not a Bermuda Triangle mystery.

USS Hornet

USS Hornet, 1829.

"The USS Wildcat, with 31 crew; the schooner Lynx, with 40 men; and the schooner Hornet (which had won a notable victory over HMS Peacock in 1812) all vanished in 1824." (Quasar, p. 55.)

Brig USS Hornet lost with all hands in gale off Tampico, Mexico on 29 Sep. 1829. 145 lost.

Radio Yerevan was asked: "Is it true that in Moscow, Mercedes cars are being given to citizens?"

Radio Yerevan answers: "In principle, yes, but it is not Moscow but Leningrad, not Mercedes but Ladas, and not given to but stolen from."

Radio Yerevan was asked: "Is it true that comrade cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin's car was stolen in Moscow during the celebrations?"

Radio Yerevan answers: "In principle, yes, but it was not in Moscow, rather in Kiev, and it was not his car, but his bike, and it was not comrade cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, but comrade high school teacher Gagarin, and his first name was not Yuri, but Leonid."

Radio Yerevan was asked: "Is it true that the schooner USS Hornet vanished in the Bermuda Triangle in 1824?"

Radio Yerevan answers: "In principle, yes, but it was not in the Bermuda Triangle, rather off Tampico, and she was not a schooner, but a brig, and she did not vanish, but was lost in gale, and the year was not 1824, but 1829."

Then again there was a schooner Hornet, but the rest of the data doesn't seem to fit… If she vanished in the Bermuda Triangle four years after the Navy sold her, I can find no account of it. And of course it was the brig Hornet that "had won a notable victory over HMS Peacock in" 1813, actually, not 1812.

The mystics wouldn't be called mystics if they ever got their facts right.

USS Wild Cat

USS Wild Cat, October 28, 1824.

"The USS Wild Cat, October 28, 1824, en route from Cuba to Thompson's Island with a crew of fourteen." (Berlitz, Bermuda Triangle, p. 64.)

"The USS Wildcat, with 31 crew; the schooner Lynx, with 40 men; and the schooner Hornet (which had won a notable victory over HMS Peacock in 1812) all vanished in 1824." (Quasar, p. 55.)

Schooner USS Wildcat lost with all hands in a gale while sailing between Cuba and Thompson's Island, West Indies. Approximately 31 drowned. 28 Oct. 1824.

Three Galleons

Three galleons, fall 1750.

In fall of 1750, the annual treasure fleet of five galleons, commanded by Captain Don Juan Manuel de Bonilla, on his flagship Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe, sailed from Havana to Spain. Off Cape Hatteras, the fleet encountered a hurricane.

The Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe barely made it through the hurricane, and so did another of the galleons, which was captured by English colonists with 32,000 pieces of eight. The three other galleons vanished in the hurricane. No wreckage or bodies were ever found or washed ashore. (Thomas Jeffrey, Bermuda Triangle, pp. 35.)

Mystic Adi-Kent Thomas Jeffrey tried hard to mystify this non-mystery by harping on how no wreckage or bodies were found, not even by the bankers, the wreckers living on the Outer Banks, who captured the other galleon.

But the assumption that floating wreckage will be found after any shipwreck is wrong, particularly if it is scattered by a storm, particularly if it is scattered by the Gulf Stream, particularly if there are no aircraft for a bird's-eye view. Her attempt is disingenuous on its face, as she mentioned the maelstrom the Gulf Stream causes off Cape Hatteras earlier in her highly fictionalized account. As for the wreckers, had they any motive to tell if they found something anyway?

This is just another tale Adi-Kent Thomas Jeffrey added, maybe because she was too lazy to do some real research on the true mysteries of the Bermuda Triangle, or maybe to pad her collection of Age of Sail stories she seems to have been fond of.

No mystery here.

Sea Venture

Sea Venture, July 28, 1609.

The Sea Venture, carrying colonists en route to Virginia, was wrecked on a reef off Bermuda, which led to the accidental colonization of Bermuda. (Snow, Mysteries and Adventures Along the Atlantic Coast, pp. 76.) By the wreck, William Shakespeare was inspired to write The Tempest.

The wreck itself was totally un-mysterious:

On June 2, 1609, the Sea Venture set sail from Plymouth as the flagship of a seven-ship fleet (towing two additional pinnaces) destined for Jamestown, Virginia, as part of the Third Supply, carrying 500 to 600 people. On July 24, the fleet ran into a strong storm, likely a hurricane, and the ships were separated. The Sea Venture fought the storm for three days. Comparably-sized ships had survived such weather, but the Sea Venture had a critical flaw in her newness: her timbers had not set. The caulking was forced from between them, and the ship began to leak rapidly. All hands were applied to bailing, but water continued to rise in the hold. The ship's guns were reportedly jettisoned (though two were salvaged from the wreck in 1612) to raise her buoyancy, but this only delayed the inevitable. The Admiral of the Company, Sir George Somers himself, was at the helm through the storm. When he spied land on the morning of July 25, the water in the hold had risen to nine feet, and crew and passengers had been driven past the point of exhaustion. Somers deliberately drove the ship onto the reefs of what proved to be Bermuda in order to prevent its foundering. This allowed all 150 people aboard, and one dog, to be landed safely ashore.

But wait, we're in the realm of cheap horror writers. So before the wreck, Somers saw a mysterious light dancing in the rigging, "like no phenomenon of heaven or earth he'd ever seen before." (Thomas Jeffrey, Bermuda Triangle, p. 24.) William Strachey, secretary-elect of the Virginia colony, mentioned it in his journal, and Shakespeare fashioned the "apparition" into the spirit Ariel.

Dare I say, St. Elmo's fire? Yep, my man Billy agrees, and he was there:

Only upon the Thursday night, Sir George Somers, being upon the watch, had an apparition of a little round light, like a faint star, trembling and streaming along with a sparkling blaze, half the height upon the main mast and shooting sometimes from shroud to shroud, 'tempting to settle, as it were, upon any of the four shrouds. And for three or four hours together, or rather more, half the night it kept with us, running sometimes along the main yard to very end and then returning; at which Sir George Somers called divers about him and showed them the same, who observed it with much wonder and carefulness. But upon a sudden, toward the morning watch they lost the sight of it and knew not what way it made.

The superstitious seamen make many constructions of this sea fire, which nevertheless is usual in storms, the same (it may be) which the Grecians were wont in the Mediterranean to call Castor and Pollux, of which if one only appeared without the other they took it for an evil sign of great tempest. The Italians and such who lie open to the Adriatic and Tyrrhenian Sea call it (a sacred body) corpo sancto; the Spaniards call it St. Elmo and have an authentic and miraculous legend for it.

Thanks, Billy. Ragnar 1, Adi-Kent 0.

Seventeen Caravels

Seventeen caravels, July 4, 1502.

Thirty-two caravels carrying treasure and slaves sailed from Santo Domingo for Spain despite Columbus' warning that the westerly winds meant an approaching hurricane. (Chaplin, pp. 21; Winer, Devil's Triangle, pp. 25.) In the Mona Passage between Hispaniola and Puerto Rico, the hurricane struck. Only five ships made it through the storm. The flagship of Admiral Antonio de Torres El Dorado and twenty-six other ships were lost.

Ten wrecks were found on reefs and beaches, but seventeen caravels vanished. No trace of them has ever been found. They were the first known ships to vanish in the Bermuda Triangle.

Not hard to figure out how. They were not as lucky as ending up on reefs and beaches.