Phantom Ships and Mysterious Skies: Unraveling the Enigma of the Bermuda Triangle

The moon sparkles splendidly and enlightens the dark water of the sea thick haze drops on it in dismal quietness, then suddenly it's broken by the squeaking of wooden boards followed by an undulating of the waves through the mist. You see the framework of an old, huge boat, its structure corroded, and a weird coldness emanating from it. But the most disrupting thing is that there's nobody on the deck. A boat sails without a crew. No, this is not the legendary Flying Dutchman, but an undeniable phantom boat.

On September 2nd, 2019, the English Imperial Navy's Ice Watch transport, called the HMS Defender, sails through the quiet waters of the Atlantic Ocean. The time is 11 pm. Some of the boat's crew are at hand, while others are sleeping in their lodges. The captain guides the boat and gazes toward the skyline. The sky is illuminated by an orange dusk, and clouds float somewhere far off. Unexpectedly, against this beautiful scene, one of the mariners sees the dark outline of an obscure boat. The captain slows down and steers the boat a bit closer to the mysterious vessel. It turns out to be an old freight transport, 250 feet in length. Attempts to contact the crew members lead to nothing. It seems the unknown boat is floating in the sea by itself, with no one on board, nobody alive. The deck of the boat squeaks from shaking on the waves. The sun sinks below the skyline, and it gets dark. The boat looks eerie. English mariners wouldn't even play with the possibility of jumping on that peculiar deck. They snap a picture, post it online, and sail away. Many people on the internet will assume the mariners met a real ghost boat.

Five months later, we're in the town of Balicotton in District Stopper, Ireland. A local goes out early in the morning for a daily run, music in his earphones, new cool air, and a panoramic detour, perfect conditions for a good exercise. The jogger runs along the road on the shore of the Celtic Ocean. There were areas of strength for a last evening, and now the sea looks calm. The man runs along the top of a low cliff and notices a large vessel—an old corroded freight transport, 250 feet long—lies on the ocean front right among the stones, no people on board. It seems the boat has been hanging around for a long time. But the local is certain this vessel wasn't here yesterday. A little later, it turns out this is the very transport that the mariners from the HMS Defender saw five months ago, thousands of miles from this spot.

The freight transport called the Alta was built in 1976. No one knows who used it this time and for what purposes. It's only known that in 2017, the boat was bought by another owner and marked with the flag of Tanzania. It's essential to say that almost all freight ships are equipped with AIS (Automatic Identification System), which is intended to track ship movements in the open sea. Starting around 2015, something bizarre started happening with the Alta's AIS. The boat vanished from the satellites, then returned again. Over the course of the past few years, this boat had changed several names and flags. It's not surprising that its AIS turned down and turned on different times. It's said that some of the individuals who disable AIS on their boats do so to hide banned activities. The boat's skipper, whoever it was, clearly didn't want to display the Alta's movements, as AIS records showed in 2017 the boat had sailed close to Greek port cities. The Alta made 12 stops in three such cities in different parts of Greece. Then, the AIS signal vanished, and after ten months, the Alta reappeared near the northern coastline of Africa, 1200 miles from Greece. In September of 2018, the boat was sailing around 1400 miles southeast of Bermuda. At that time, the crew members started having problems. There were ten people on board the Alta.

On September 19th, the boat's engine failed right in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. The nearest shore was very far away. The boat began to drift. As days passed, the crew couldn't fix the vessel, and food supplies were running low. The crew started to panic and tried to contact someone. The situation worsened as a storm was approaching where the boat broke down. The crew members contacted the U.S. Coast Guard on October 2nd, and a helicopter headed towards the boat. Food and water were dumped on the Alta. This was enough for the crew to buy their time for a few days. About a week later, a salvage boat sailed around 1500 miles to reach the Alta and help the abandoned sailors. We can estimate the number of boats and planes that were lost in the Bermuda Triangle, but have their disappearances come about due to human error or weather peculiarities? Let's try to figure it out.

We have a curious story of the SS Cotopaxi. This boat disappeared in 1925 while traveling from Charleston, South Carolina, to Havana, Cuba. It never reached its destination. Years later, during the 1980s, a wreck was found 40 miles off Saint Augustine, Florida. Since experts couldn't definitively determine what and where it came from, they nicknamed it "Bear Wreck." It required many additional years of work, primarily by oceanographers, to identify that this boat was indeed the missing SS Cotopaxi. This was confirmed in January 2020. How did the boat just reappear, and how did it get there? Since this mysterious wreck isn't even in the Bermuda Triangle, let's see who came up with this term, "Bermuda Triangle."

Could you ever really pinpoint the triangle on a map? No, it's not a formally recognized area, and official establishments wouldn't acknowledge that the region truly exists. In March 1918, carrying a crew of 306 people, the USS Cyclops departed Barbados and headed to Baltimore. The boat passed through the Bermuda Triangle on its voyage. Unfortunately, it never reached its destination and disappeared without a trace. Similarly, many other boats and planes have vanished without leaving a trace of their destruction in the region.

The Bermuda Triangle has been the subject of legends dating back to the 15th century, such as the story of the Italian explorer Christopher Columbus. While sailing through the Atlantic Waters in the late 1400s, what we now know as the Bermuda Triangle, he saw a gigantic fire that appeared to collide with the sea. Later, he saw an unusual light flashing in the distance at the exact location. Like many other mariners since then, his compass had severe malfunctions.

Flight 19, a Navy plane on a routine schedule back in 1945, also contributed to the Bermuda Triangle legend. It was reported by Lieutenant Charles Taylor, and it's recorded that he simply got lost in the Triangle for no apparent reason. Since pilots had no GPS in those days, they had to rely on their compasses and keep track of how long they'd been flying in a specific bearing and their speed. Shortly after completing the mission, both of the compasses on board quit working correctly. Records found after the plane's disappearance also indicate that Taylor didn't have a watch on that particular day. The initial report stated that pilot error was to blame for this unfortunate event. However, because people