Infamous America - BERMUDA TRIANGLE Ep. 1 | “Ghost Ships”

Episode Date: November 25, 2020

Disappearing ships. Disappearing crew members. Disappearing passengers. The Bermuda Triangle has a long history of causing ships and people to vanish without a trace. Here are some of the most puzzling mysteries of the past 200 years. Join Black Barrel+ for bingeable seasons with no commercials : blackbarrel.supportingcast.fm/join For more details, please visit www.blackbarrelmedia.com. Our social media pages are: @blackbarrelmedia on Facebook and Instagram, and @bbarrelmedia on Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

During his first voyage to the New World in 1492, Christopher Columbus recorded strange phenomenon his logbook. On September 13th, as he entered the waters surrounding the island group of the Bahamas, he noticed that the needle of his compass no longer pointed to the North Star. Two nights later, Columbus and his crew aboard the Santa Maria saw what they described as fire falling from the sky. It was the only sighting of anything besides endless water. By October 10th, the crew's apprehension had increased to the point of near-mutiny.

Columbus needed to head off disaster. He promised his men that if they didn't see land within two days, they would return home. The next day, at about 10 o'clock at night, one of Columbus's lieutenants alerted him to a strange light on the horizon. Columbus described the light as looking like a small wax candle bobbing up and down. Columbus's men were terrified. They wondered if they'd entered a whole new world where the laws and influences of nature no longer governed the way they did at home. Columbus and the men aboard the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria

are the first known people to mention strange events happening in what we now call the Bermuda Triangle. From Black Barrel Media, this is, infamous America. I'm your host, Chris Wimmer. In this season, we're telling some of the most infamous stories about one of the most mysterious places on Earth, the Bermuda Triangle. This is Chapter 1, Ghost Ships. The Bermuda Triangle is a stretch of the Atlantic Ocean roughly running between Puerto Rico, Bermuda, and Miami. It's been credited with the deaths and disappearances of over 8,000 people since the mid-1800s. When Columbus Landau, landed on the island now known as San Salvador on October 12, 1492.

He ushered in a new age of empire in North America. Shortly after he made his voyage, his compass problem was explained as being the difference between true north and magnetic north. Explorers very quickly learned how to adjust for the mathematical difference. As for the shower of lights he saw on the horizon, most historians believe that Columbus witnessed his first meteor shower in the new world. And most historians agree that the bobbing light he saw could simply be the nighttime fire activity of the indigenous people he was about to meet. It was all explainable, but many things that happened there were not explainable, and we still

have no answers. Even though historians seem to explain the strange things witnessed by Columbus and his crew, there are some who believe that Columbus witnessed something else. In the centuries since 1492, people have interpreted the compass problems and visions of lights in the sky to be the work of meddlesome alien forces. One treasure hunter maintains that he's identified a craft on the bottom of the ocean near the Bahamas. It has 15 horizontal structures. The structures are massive, each measuring as much as the length of a U.S. football field, and they all jud out from a center object. The explorer also found other bizarre and unexplained formations around the center object,

all of which are covered in thick coral. Scientists on the hunter's team said coral couldn't naturally grow in those formations, and the coral could be thousands of years old. The treasure hunter used the secret maps and data left to him by his deceased mentor, a NASA astronaut. The mentor was an outspoken believer in UFOs, and that the U.S. government actively concealed proof of extraterrestrial visits to Earth. And the astronaut said the Bermuda Triangle was where many of the ships landed.

One notable triangle researcher and author has long maintained that Christopher Columbus and his crew were too far from land to be able to see lights started by indigenous people. As for the compass problems, the researcher theorizes that Columbus was in danger of losing the faith of his crew. They might have been about to mutiny, so Columbus calmed them down by saying there was some kind of strange natural force at work in that area. That strange force was wreaking havoc on his instruments, and that was why they were having problems. It was better for Columbus to blame the issues on a mysterious, undefined force than to allow for

the possibility of user error. Whatever happened with Columbus and his crew, whether it was genuine mysterious phenomena or easily explainable coincidences. New stories were about to emerge from the Bermuda Triangle that defied explanation. There were stories of vanishing ships and vanishing crews and eventually vanishing Navy bombers in World War II and hundreds of disappearances since then. From the late 1700s to the mid-1800s, things got really weird.

Columbus may have inadvertently recorded the first extraterrestrial interference in the Bermuda Triangle. But at least all his ships arrived on land, and all passengers were accounted for. Records of ship disappearances in the Bermuda Triangle have been kept since the late 1700s. The earliest one is the U.S. warship General Gates, which vanished in 1780. While it's possible a British warship sanker, there's no record of an engagement. There are scores of ship disappearances listed in old marine journals. Curiously, most of them are warship. That's peculiar because warships were usually sturdier than merchant vessels and manned by large numbers of well-trained crews.

But in September 1799, the USS Insurgent, a 36-gun French-built warship with a crew of 340, disappeared without a trace, and it wasn't the only one. In August of 1800, the USS Pickering vanished on a voyage to the West Indies. During the War of 1812, the USS Sloop of War wasp ravaged several British ships. In October 1814, she vanished, never to be seen again. Many more ships disappeared in the Bermuda Triangle over the next decade or so, with no cargo or broken wood or any trace of them ever surfacing. They were just gone.

In August 1840, an even more bizarre mystery was. created by a ship called the Rosalie. The Rosalie was a French vessel, and at the time it was sailing from Germany to New Orleans. It was new, having been built just two years earlier. In November of 1840, a letter written by a government official in the Bahamas to the London Times recounted the eerie discovery of the Rosalie off its coast. The ship was completely intact, but missing its entire crew. Her sails were still set, and she did not appear to have seen.

sustained any damage. Her cargo was also untouched. The ship carried wines, fruits, silks, and other things of considerable value, all of which were in perfect condition. The cargo was even bundled together and addressed to different merchants. It was ready to be distributed. And the captain's papers were all locked in their proper places. The only thing that was out of the ordinary was the three feet of water in the ship's hold. But there was no sign of a leak, so even that was strange. The officer and passenger cabins looked tidy and only recently deserted. The only living things on board were a cat and some birds that were half dead with hunger. People at the time had no answers or even a decent theory. And as strange as the Rosalie's

experience was, it was mild when compared to the incident of a mystery ship 40 years later. In December 1880, the Ellen Austin left Liverpool English. for the long journey to New York. She was filled with immigrants seeking a new life in a new world. Several weeks into the voyage, the ship arrived in the Mid-Atlantic Sargasso Sea. The western portion of the Sargasso Sea lies in what is considered to be the Bermuda Triangle. The sea can be very calm for days at a time. So after a few days of relative boredom, Captain Griffin was happy to have a distraction

when another ship drifted into view. It was considerably smaller, than the Ellen Austin. As Captain Griffin studied it through his spyglass, he noticed something odd. He saw nobody on board and no identifying name or flags. Griffin did nothing at first because he suspected it was some kind of trick by pirates. But after a few days, the mystery schooner was still drifting nearby. Griffin decided it could be a valuable salvage. So we took a small party of armed men over, boarded the schooner, and searched it. it. Nobody was on board, pirates or otherwise. Its logbook was missing, but its valuable cargo of

mahogany wood was intact. Griffin put several members of his own crew aboard the mystery ship and claimed the schooner as salvage. The two ships sailed together toward New York until a great storm arose and separated them. When the weather cleared a few days later, Captain Griffin could see no trace of the schooner. But then, a crew member saw his own. in the distance. The Ellen Austin changed course to intercept it. When the captain lifted his spy glass and gazed over the water at the schooner, he was dumbfounded. The ship was deserted. His prized crew was gone. Understandably, Griffin's remaining crew did not want to try another salvage mission. But then they thought about how much money they could make from the smaller ship's cargo,

and they changed their minds. It was worth it to grab the ship a second time. And this time, The crew of the Ellen Austin made a concerted effort to keep the two ships side by side. A boarding party formed to go on to the mystery vessel. This time, they were all well armed. The two ships rang bells all throughout the night, so each craft would know exactly where the other was. But that night, a dense fog rolled in. It was so thick that the Ellen Austin lost sight of the schooner's lantern.

But they still had the bells. The men on the ships continued to ring the bell. to stay in contact, even though they couldn't see each other. And then the bell on the schooner stopped. The Ellen Austin clanged her bell throughout the night but received no answer. In the morning, the fog lifted and revealed an empty ocean. There was no trace of the ghostly schooner or the men who volunteered to leave the Ellen Austin. And they were never seen again.

Disappearances prior to the 1900s were certainly easier to explain. The ships were made of wood and could be torn apart by violent storms. Their remains could be scattered across the bottom of the ocean and no one would ever know. A mysterious disappearance might not have been mysterious after all. But the Bermuda Triangle has allegedly swallowed its share of vessels in the 20th century as well. One of these was the biggest ship in the U.S. Navy at the time of its disappearance, the USS Cyclops. In March 1918, an enormous bulk cargo ship named the USS Cyclops disappeared on a voyage from the West Indies to Baltimore, Maryland. The Cyclops was nearly 550 feet long.

That's the size of one and a half American football fields. The Cyclops had a crew of 306, and it carried around 11,000 tons of manganese ore. She first put to sea in 1910 and often traveled between the Baltimore. Baltic Sea, the Caribbean, and Mexico. She moved coal and helped refugees. When America entered World War I, the Cyclops became a key naval asset. She ferried troops and coal all over the world, until she completely vanished. In March 1918, the Cyclops was given a new cargo, tons of dense manganese ore, which was used to make steel.

She left Brazil loaded up with the brittle metal, then sailed to Barbados to resupply for the long journey home to Baltimore. The last known message from the ship said simply, weather fair, all well. But something happened during the nine-day journey from Barbados to Baltimore. No one from the ship was ever seen or heard from again. The Cyclops disappeared without so much as an SOS. A few years after the ship disappeared, a magazine described how strange it was. Usually after a wreck, at least something from a lost ship was picked up. It could be as small as a wooden bucket or a cork life preserver. But not with the

Cyclops. This massive ship filled with 11,000 tons of minerals had just vanished. The article said that her disappearance was as though some gigantic monster of the sea had grabbed her, men and all, and center to the depths of the ocean. And the suddenness of her destruction was amplified by the absence of any calls for help. But because the incident happened during World War I, people naturally wondered if the Cyclops had been torpedoed by a German submarine or raider. She would have been a strategic target. But no evidence of an attack has materialized.

There was no evidence that German subs or boats had been in the area at all. Some people pointed fingers at the captain. Months earlier, some members of the Cyclops crew claimed the captain was a drunk and unsuitable to steer the ship. There was a Navy report of a small mutiny on board. But the mutiny was quickly squelched by the captain, and the Navy defended the captain's version of events. It appeared it was just the work of a few troublemakers, and there was no serious problem. But to this day, there is no evidence of what happened to the Cyclops. The U.S. Navy released an official statement, part of which said,

The disappearance of this ship has been one of the most baffling mysteries in the annals of the Navy. All attempts to locate her, having proved unsuccessful. On August 22nd, 1920, two years after the Cyclops disappeared, the Carol A. Deering set sail from Virginia. The Deering was only a year old and in perfect shape. It had an experienced captain and a crew of ten. It was bound for Rio-Dajunero, Brazil, with a cargo of coal. A few days after it set sail, the captain got sick.

The Deering turned into a port to replace him. In spite of the bad start, the ship delivered its cargo on schedule. The new captain gave his crew a long leave in Rio. Finally, on December 2nd, the ship left Brazil and began the trip back to Virginia. It stopped in Barbados for supplies. While on shore, the ship's first mate got really drunk. He complained to the captain of another ship that the crew didn't like its replacement captain. The first mate also said that he had to do most of the navigation because, unbeknownst to most people,

the captain had terrible eyesight. And furthermore, he planned to do the captain bodily harm before they reached Virginia. The first mate was arrested for being drunk and disorderly, and it didn't take long for his words to reach his safety. captain. But the first mate apologized when he sobered up, and the captain bailed him out of the island's jail, and they set off for home. On January 29, 1921, a light shipkeeper in North Carolina spotted the Carroll Deering bound for its home port. The Deering hailed the lightship, whose job was to act as a floating source of light in dangerous waters. The keeper saw a tall, thin

man with reddish hair aboard the Deering. The man called out to the keeper through a megaphone and reported the ship had lost its anchors in a storm off Cape Fear. According to the keeper, the man had a foreign accent of some kind, and he asked the keeper to notify the ship's owners of the problem. But the light ship keeper had a problem of his own. His radio was out, so he wasn't able to report the distress of the Carol Deering. The keeper said later that he thought it was strange that the crew seemed to be milling about, on the quarter deck. That wasn't normally an area where the crew was allowed. Two days later, on the morning of January 31st, a worker at the Cape Hatteras Coast Guard station spied the Carol Deering run aground near shore. Its sails were still set, and its lifeboats were missing.

Rough waters kept boats from reaching the wreck for another four days. When rescuers finally arrived, they confirmed what they had already suspected. The Carol Deering was abandoned. The crew had vanished like ghosts. There were no personal belongings on board. There was no logbook or other pavers. The key navigational equipment was gone, and so were all of the anchors.

Despite an exhaustive investigation since then by the FBI and other authorities, no sign of any of the ship's crew or logs has ever been found. Six years after the crew, of the Carol Deering vanished, another ship made headlines because of its eerie disappearance in the Bermuda Triangle. On March 13, 1926, a freighter left Port Newark in New Jersey. It was headed for the west coast by way of the Panama Canal. When the ship didn't appear in the canal as scheduled, its owners and the family of its 28 passengers waited in agony for news. None ever came.

Its disappearance stunned everyone. Its captain had 25 years of experience, and he and the ship had both weathered the worst possible storms time and again. There were no explanations. In 1941, those who remembered the disappearance of the USS Cyclops 20 years earlier were shocked once again. That year, the Cyclops' two sister ships, the Proteus and the Nuris, both vanished while traveling from the Verstic. Virgin Islands to the United States. As the 20th century wore on, there were many more bizarre ship disappearances in the Bermuda Triangle. In some, it was just the ship's humans who completely vanished.

In others, the entire vessel with its crew ceased to exist. One of the strangest was the story of the Rubicon. On October 21st, 1944, off the coast of Florida, a Navy blimp on an anti-Sceasinger, submarine patrol cited the 90-ton Rubicon. At the time, she was an unknown vessel drifting about 35 miles east of Key Largo. The blimp notified the Coast Guard in Miami by radio. Two boats motored out to investigate. When they arrived, the guardsmen made strange discoveries. The personal effects of the crew were intact, neat and tidy. The ship's log was there, which told them the ship was registered in Cuba.

Everything seemed to be in order, except the lifeboats were gone. It wasn't clear if they'd been purposefully removed or if they'd been snapped off by violent winds or waves. And two of the ship's three rudders were gone, as well as, of course, the ship's entire crew. The only living thing on board was one tiny, very hungry, very pregnant dog. She was obviously someone's pet, which begged a question.

if the crew and the passengers had left the ship voluntarily, why would they leave the dog behind? Within a couple days, the Coast Guard determined that the Rubicon typically ran between Cuba and Miami, carrying rum and other cargo, and usually berthed in a causeway off Miami Beach. It usually carried a crew of 11, none of whom were seen again. Soon, newspapers started referring to the Rubicon simply as the ghost ship.

Most of the recorded disappearances of ships and crews in the Bermuda Triangle happen to be from vessels from the United States or nations near the United States, such as the case with the Rubicon and Cuba. But not always. The Soviet Union, with one of the most sophisticated navies in the world, has its own share of unexplained occurrences in the Bermuda Triangle, including that of potential alien activity. While patrolling there in the 1980s,

Soviet rear admiral and nuclear submarine commander Yuri Bekatov noticed that his on-board instruments often malfunctioned. He said they seemed to be jammed by a force coming from interference outside the submarine. On more than one occasion, Bekatov's sonar system was said to have picked up unidentified objects, moving at over 265 miles per hour underwater. He said that kind of speed was a challenge even on the surface, but water resistance is much higher. It was like the objects defied the laws of physics. Bekatov concluded there was only one explanation. The creatures who built those objects far surpassed human beings in development. On one occasion, a Soviet nuclear submarine, which was on a combat mission in the Pacific Ocean, detected six unknown objects.

After the crew failed to leave behind their pursuers by maneuvering, the captain ordered the sub to the surface. The objects followed, then rose up out of the water, and flew away. According to one Soviet-era Navy intelligence veteran, ocean-based UFOs often showed up wherever NATO fleets were concentrated. That meant they were mostly seen near the Bahamas, Bermudas, and Puerto Rico. He said they were most often seen in the deepest part of the Atlantic Ocean, in the southern part of the Bermuda Triangle and also in the Caribbean Sea.

Both the Soviet Union and the United States were so concerned about strange sightings and the loss of ships and submarines in the Bermuda Triangle that they decided to work together. In 1975, they jointly announced a five-year study called Polymode. They wanted to find out exactly what natural phenomenon might be causing the last. losses. The joint operation was held east of Bermuda, on the fringe of what is considered the Bermuda Triangle, or what newspapers were now calling the Devil's Triangle. The scientists who worked on Polymode mostly agreed on their findings. They felt the Bermuda Triangle had weather systems and underwater reef formations that are rarely found in other places in the world. That

combination was probably causing the losses. But the release of the study didn't stop millions of people in the U.S., the Soviet Union, and all over the world from believing there was something otherworldly about the region. And thanks to the best-selling books of three men in the 1970s, the obsession with the Bermuda Triangle was about to explode. One of the most prominent stories in those books is probably the most famous incident about the Bermuda Triangle in American history. Next time on Infamous America, it's the story of one of the biggest unsolved mysteries of the

The Disappearance of Five Navy Bombers in 1945, better known as Flight 19. That's next time on Infamous America. And if you're a member of our Black Barrel Plus program, you already have access to the full season. If you're not a member, you can sign up now through the link in the show notes or on our website, blackbarrelmedia.com. Members receive access to each new season in its entirety one week before the season begins for the general public and members receive exclusive bonus episodes. Sign up today for just $5 per month.

This season was researched and written by Julia Brickland, original music by Rob Valier, audio editing and sound design by Dave Harrison. I'm your host and producer, Chris Wimmer. Find us at our website, blackbarrelmedia.com or on our social media channels. We're BlackBarrel Media on Facebook and Instagram and B-Berrel Media on Twitter. And you can stream all our episodes on YouTube. Just search for Infamous America Podcast. Thanks for listening.