The Bermuda Triangle

Introduction

The Bermuda Triangle — also called the Devil's Triangle — is an ill-defined maritime zone in the North Atlantic between the southern tip of Florida, the island of Bermuda, and Puerto Rico. Since the 1950s, a popular mythology has built up claiming that ships and aircraft disappear in this area at a statistically extraordinary rate, and that conventional explanations fail to account for these vanishings. Proposed mechanisms have ranged from methane hydrate eruptions and magnetic anomalies to Atlantean crystal energy and extraterrestrial craft.

The theory is not confirmed. Multiple lines of statistical and investigative evidence demonstrate that the Bermuda Triangle's reputation for mystery is largely a creation of selective reporting, poor sourcing, and journalistic embellishment.

Origins of the Myth

The Bermuda Triangle as a concept was popularised by journalist Vincent Gaddis in a 1964 Argosy magazine article, and subsequently amplified by Charles Berlitz's 1974 bestseller The Bermuda Triangle, which sold millions of copies and dramatised dozens of alleged disappearances. Before Gaddis, individual cases had been reported but not assembled into a coherent claim of anomaly.

The most commonly cited "founding" incident is the disappearance of US Navy Training Flight 19 on 5 December 1945 — five TBM Avenger torpedo bombers that vanished during a training exercise off Fort Lauderdale. The flight's instructor, Lieutenant Charles Taylor, was experienced but became disoriented after confusing his compass bearings; radio transcripts show navigational confusion, not supernatural experience. A search-and-rescue Mariner PBM also disappeared that day, likely from an in-flight explosion consistent with the aircraft's known maintenance issues.

Larry Kusche's Investigation

In 1975, amateur researcher and librarian Larry Kusche published The Bermuda Triangle Mystery: Solved, a book that remains the most thorough direct examination of the case evidence. Kusche systematically reviewed the primary sources for each disappearance cited by Berlitz and others — Coast Guard records, Lloyd's of London insurance records, contemporaneous newspaper reports, weather service data, and official accident investigations.

His findings were devastating to the mythology:

• Several disappearances occurred in good weather; Berlitz had described storms.
• Several alleged disappearances occurred outside the Triangle's claimed boundaries.
• Some ships reported as mysteriously vanished had in fact sunk in storms that were well-documented in contemporaneous records.
• At least one ship cited as lost in the Triangle had actually disappeared in the Pacific Ocean.
• Some "disappearances" were simply cases of inadequate reporting: vessels that sank for ordinary reasons without their loss being widely publicised in the US.

Kusche's conclusion: the Bermuda Triangle's anomalous reputation exists because writers selected only the mysterious-sounding cases and ignored the mundane explanations.

Lloyd's of London and Statistical Evidence

Lloyd's of London, the world's most experienced maritime insurer, examined whether the Bermuda Triangle carried anomalous risk as early as 1975 and concluded it did not. The organisation found no statistical basis for treating the region as unusually dangerous and charged no premium surcharge for vessels transiting the area. The US Coast Guard similarly found that the region's incident rate was not abnormal given its traffic volume — it is one of the world's most heavily travelled maritime corridors.

The World Wide Fund for Nature produced a 2013 analysis identifying the ten most dangerous waters in the world for shipping. The Bermuda Triangle was not among them. The study found the South China Sea and North Sea to be statistically far more hazardous.

Natural Explanations for Specific Cases

Where real disappearances occurred, natural explanations generally suffice:

Methane hydrate eruptions. The Blake Ridge offshore of the Carolinas contains substantial methane hydrate deposits. If a sufficiently large hydrate outgassing occurred, it could theoretically reduce water density enough to sink a ship rapidly. While this phenomenon is scientifically possible in principle, there is no confirmed historical case and no evidence linking any Triangle disappearance to a hydrate event.

Weather. The western North Atlantic produces violent, fast-moving weather systems. Waterspouts and sudden squalls are common in the area.

Human error and navigation complexity. The region includes the Bahamas Bank, a shallow and difficult-to-navigate area. Before GPS, navigation by dead reckoning in this area — with its complex currents, magnetic variations, and overlapping traffic — was genuinely difficult. Flight 19's compass confusion is a well-documented example.

Depth. Parts of the region include the Puerto Rico Trench, the deepest point in the Atlantic Ocean at about 8,376 metres. Aircraft and vessels that sink there may never be recovered, making disappearances appear more mysterious than they are.

Verdict

Debunked. The Bermuda Triangle's anomalous reputation cannot be sustained when the underlying case evidence is examined rigorously. Lloyd's of London data, Coast Guard records, and Kusche's primary-source investigation all converge: the region does not experience statistically abnormal disappearances. The mystery is a media and publishing phenomenon, not a physical one.