What's the most mysterious and blood-chilling place on Earth?
The first thing that comes to my mind is the infamous Bermuda Triangle!
This area earned its terrifying reputation by swallowing countless ships and airplanes,
leaving no trace behind.
But recently, the Bermuda Triangle has added another mystery to its record: Cuban coast
guards came across a ship that had gone missing more than 90 years ago!
It was November 29, 1925, when the S.S. Cotopaxi left Charleston, South Carolina, and headed
for Havana, Cuba, carrying a big load of coal and 32 crew members.
The story has it that several days later, the steamer ran into a violent storm, got
water in its hold, and started to tilt dramatically.
On December 1, the ship sent out a distress call, and since then, nothing was ever heard
from the crew again.
The ship seemed to have vanished into thin air... until 2018!
On May 18, the Cuban coast guards announced that they’d come across a ship that wasn’t
answering their calls.
Since it happened close to a military zone with limited access, it caused a bit of turmoil.
The mysterious ship was nearing the island west of Havana, and seemed to ignore all attempts
by the coast guards to communicate.
That's why three other vessels surrounded and blocked the intruder.
To tell you the truth, even at first sight, the ship looked bizarre.
Rusty and run-down, it seemed to drift mindlessly, without any destination in mind.
And when the crew climbed on board the ship, which indeed seemed to have been abandoned
for decades, they found nothing but more oddities.
First of all, there was not a living soul on board.
It baffled the guards to no end: a ship sailing across the ocean, unmanned and uncontrolled?
But that wasn't the only abnormality they found.
However unbelievable it may sound, upon closer inspection, the coast guards realized that
the discovered ship was S.S. Cotopaxi, lost in the waters of the North Atlantic Ocean
almost 90 years before!
What gave it away was the chief's logbook, related to the Clinchfield Navigation Company,
which was the very company S.S. Cotopaxi belonged to.
After Cuban experts confirmed the authenticity of the logbook, researchers got super excited.
And no wonder - now they could finally find out what happened to the ship in 1925!
Unfortunately, pretty soon, they realized that the logbook wasn't living up to their
expectations.
It contained tons of interesting information about the everyday life of the ship's crew,
but nothing at all about what caused the disappearance of the massive ship.
On December 1, 1925, the entries in the book simply came to an abrupt stop.
It was the very day when the ship sent out a distress call and then stopped replying
to any radio signals.
So, as you see, the mysterious finding brought more questions than answers.
If S.S. Cotopaxi sank almost 9 decades ago, how did it reappear on the surface?
What happened to the crew, and how did they disappeared without a trace?
And finally: does the finding mean that the Bermuda Triangle has started to return the
prey it’s been collecting for centuries?
But the worst thing about this discovery is... that it might have never happened!
Soon after this breaking news appeared in different mass media sources, too many people
started to question the truthfulness of the story.
Not only did it seem too unbelievable to be real, but there was also no convincing evidence
that the ship had been found in the first place.
There were indeed numerous photos of a rusty steamer on the Internet, but was it S.S. Cotopaxi?
Unlikely.
That's why there's probably no use in combing through the Atlantic Ocean in search of other
long-lost vessels and planes just yet.
On the other hand, over centuries, there have been so many mysterious disappearances in
that area that the chances are high that you'll find one or two ships that fell victim to
the infamous Triangle.
Maybe it’ll be the Patriot, a passenger schooner that left Charleston, South Carolina,
on December 30, 1812, and headed for New York City.
The ship, which had Theodosia Burr Aston on board, the daughter of former American Vice
President Aaron Burr, went missing soon after departure, and no one ever heard from the
schooner again.
Or you may come across S.S. El Faro, a much more recent disappearance.
This cargo ship left Jacksonville, Florida, on October 1, 2015, with 33 crew members and
countless vehicles, trailers, and containers on board.
The 790-ft vessel was supposed to deliver its load to Puerto Rico, but something went
terribly wrong.
A violent tropical storm that started miles away suddenly transformed into a powerful
hurricane that rushed toward El Faro.
It started to circle around the cargo ship, making communication from the vessel go silent.
But the most shocking thing was that after causing all this turmoil, the hurricane miraculously
retreated in the same direction it came from!
Weeks later, after a thorough and extensive search, rescuers finally located the ship;
it was still in one piece and sitting upright on the bottom, at a depth of 15,000 ft.
But the blood-chilling truth was that there was no trace of any of the crew members on
board.
The Bermuda Triangle had already gained popularity in the 15th century when Christopher Columbus
documented weird compass readings and bizarre lights in the area.
Its nickname, "Hurricane Alley," speaks for itself.
The weird thing about the Bermuda Triangle is not that too many ships and planes disappear
there (after all, it's the menacing and unpredictable Atlantic Ocean!), but that in most cases,
even if the wreckage is found, there are no people on board, living or not.
One of the most infamous Bermuda Triangle disappearances of all times was USS Cyclops,
a huge carrier ship that used to supply fuel to the American fleet.
On January 8, 1918, heavy and full of Manganese ores, the ship departed from Rio de Janeiro
and headed for Baltimore.
Being only a few years old, the ship shouldn’t have experienced any problems, and all 309
people on board felt safe and calm.
But this feeling turned out to be deceptive, because somewhere around March 4, 1918, the
ship disappeared into thin air, without sending out a distress call or indicating it was having
problems in any other way.
In the history of the U.S. Navy, it remains the accident which caused the largest loss
of life at sea.
As for airplanes, probably the most inexplicable disappearance happened on December 5, 1945,
and got the name "The Lost Patrol."
Flight-19 was the code name for 5 bomber planes that flew from the naval base in Florida on
a training flight.
No one knows for sure what happened to the planes, but they never returned to the base.
Most experts believe that the commander of this group, Charles Taylor, got lost and led
the planes in the wrong direction.
Those machines could land on water, so, hypothetically, after getting low on fuel, the pilots could
ditch and wait for help, rocking on the surface of the ocean.
But that didn't happen.
Although two rescue Martin Mariner planes were searching the area all through the night
and the next day, they found no trace of the five disappeared planes.
But the most spine-chilling coincidence was that one of the rescue planes failed to return
to the base as well!
All 6 planes vanished into thin air as if they’d never existed!
There’ve been several other plane disappearances when the aircraft went off the radars and
never returned.
In some cases, pilots had time to send out a Mayday distress call.
In others, they disappeared at the blink of an eye when everything seemed to be going
perfectly fine.
Well, no doubt, it all looks very suspicious, and the notoriety of the Bermuda Triangle
might be well-earned, but think of this.
The area of the Bermuda Triangle varies from 500,000 to 1,510,000 square miles, depending
on the person describing the anomalous zone.
Besides, it's one of the most heavily traveled routes in the world, with thousands of vessels
crossing it to get to the ports of Europe, America, and the Caribbean.
On the other hand, only several dozen ships and planes have been lost in the Bermuda Triangle
over the last centuries.
I mean, if you think about it, it's not that much more than in any other dangerous area
of the Ocean, right?
Do you know any other exciting stories about the Bermuda Triangle?
Let me know down in the comments!
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