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The Bermuda Triangle is a large area of ocean between Florida, Puerto Rico, and Bermuda. Over the last few centuries, it's thought that dozens of ships and planes have disappeared under mysterious circumstances in the area, earning it the nickname "The Devil's Triangle."
People have even gone so far as to speculate that it's an area of extra-terrestrial activity or that there is some bizarre natural scientific cause for the region to be hazardous; but most likely, it's simply an area in which people have experienced a lot of bad luck—the idea of it being a "vortex of doom" is no more real than Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster (see The Origin of the Bigfoot Legend and The Origin of the Loch Ness Monster).
The Bermuda Triangle's bad reputation started with Christopher Columbus. According to his log, on October 8, 1492, Columbus looked down at his compass and noticed that it was giving weird readings. He didn't alert his crew at first, because having a compass that didn't point to magnetic north may have sent the already on edge crew into a panic. This was probably a good decision considering three days later when Columbus simply spotted a strange light, the crew threatened to return to Spain.
This and other reported compass issues in the region gave rise to the myth that compasses will all be off in the Triangle, which isn't correct, or at least is an exaggeration of what is actually happening as you'll see. Despite this, in 1970 the U.S. Coast Guard, attempting to explain the reasons for disappearances in the Triangle, stated:
First, the "Devil's Triangle" is one of the two places on earth that a magnetic compass does point towards true north. Normally it points toward magnetic north. The difference between the two is known as compass variation. The amount of variation changes by as much as 20 degrees as one circumnavigates the earth. If this compass variation or error is not compensated for, a navigator could find himself far off course and in deep trouble.
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1. Mary Celeste
Possibly one of the most mysterious stories of shipwrecks, this ship is a tale of its own. Despite being found adrift in some other location in the Atlantic Ocean, the connection to the Bermuda triangle had been somehow invoked to find an answer to the mystery of its fate.
Discovered on 4th December 1872 with everything right in the place except for the entire crew, the ship was found stranded on the sea days after it started its journey from New York to Genoa, Italy. There were seven crew members along with Captain Benjamin Briggs, his wife and their two-year-old daughter abroad the vessel which was loaded with raw alcohol. But, days after, when a passing British ship called Dei Gratia found Mary Celeste under partial sail in Atlantic, off the Azores Islands, the ship was unmanned with no crew abroad and the lifeboat was also missing. It was also found that nine of the barrels in the cargo were empty and there was a sword on the deck. No trace of the people abroad the vessel or the missing lifeboat has ever been found.
2. Witchcraft
On December 22, 1967, a cabin cruiser named witchcraft left from Miami with her captain Dan Burack and his friend, Father Patrick Horgan. The two gentlemen’s journey on the 23-foot luxury yacht was to enjoy the wonderful view of Miami’s Christmas lights. However, after reaching just one mile from offshore, the coast guard received a call from the captain stating that his ship had hit something but there was no substantial damage. Indicating help to be towed to the shore, the coast guard set off immediately reaching witchcraft in as many as 19 minutes alone but to nothing.
The area indicating the location of the ship was completely deserted with no signs of any ship having been stranded or even present there previously. What’s most intriguing about this story is that this particular cruiser was virtually unsinkable, not to mention that numerous life-saving devices present aboard including life jackets, lifeboats, flares, distress signal devices etc. None of them was used and the ship was gone. The coast guard officials searched hundreds of square miles of ocean over the next few days but were unsuccessful. Nothing of this ship has been found until this day. The ship is gone and what remains is only the speculation that can be done now.
