All other triangles (other than the Bermuda triangle)
From immemorial time, the ocean has appeared to ancient civilizations as a hostile and dangerous environment. Just as on land, there are some oceanic areas that have recorded numerous anomalies and mysteries.
The most famous zone for the enigmatic phenomena that characterize it is undoubtedly the Bermuda Triangle, an area of the Atlantic Ocean whose vertices are marked by the Bermuda Archipelago, the island of Puerto Rico, and the tip of the Florida peninsula.
Numerous enigmatic phenomena have been described by sailors and aviators throughout history. Even Christopher Columbus noted in his diaries mysterious spheres of light seen floating on the waters of this mysterious patch of the Atlantic Ocean (https://www.neperos.com/article/s9znuqfe208a57c9).
Researchers have proposed various hypotheses to justify phenomena that defy the laws of physics and the mysterious disappearances of entire ships and aircraft: from the presence of a space-time tunnel, to magnetic distortions from some yet unknown phenomenon.
Some even believe that at the bottom of the Bermuda Triangle there exists a gigantic crystal pyramid, an ancient energy generator that would cause the anomalies and that would be a relic of the mythical civilization of Atlantis, which sank 13,000 years ago to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.
But the Bermuda Triangle is not the only place on the planet where these mysterious and enigmatic phenomena occur.
The Sea of the Devil
Also known as the "Dragon's Triangle," it is an area of the Pacific Ocean located off the southeast coast of Japan. Here too, an ideal triangle can be identified whose vertices are marked by the islands of Honshu, Luzon, and Guam.
This area has become infamous for the anomalies that have been passed down by sailors since immemorial time. Legends tell that this area of the Pacific Ocean is inhabited by devils and sea monsters that wait to attack unwary sailors.
But beyond the legends, there are historical facts that seems to confirm it. The numerous disappearances of ships and airplanes in the area have compelled the Japanese government to declare it a "dangerous zone."
According to writer Charles Berlitz's accounts, between 1952 and 1954, Japan lost five military ships in this area, all of which vanished without a trace.
In 1955, the Japanese government commissioned an expedition in that stretch of sea to shed light on the mysterious disappearances and to assess the real danger of the geographic coordinates. But no one would have expected that the oceanographic vessel Kaiyo Maru 5 would also disappear into thin air with all its crew on board, consisting of sailors and scientists.
Following such enigmatic events, numerous independent researchers began an in-depth study of the Dragon's Triangle. Among these, the work of Ivan Sanderson stands out, who included this area of the Pacific in the "Twelve Devil’s Graveyards Around the World," an article that Sanderson presented to the scientific community in 1972.
According to the researchers' hypothesis, there are 12 zones similar to the Bermuda Triangle around the world, positioned at 72° intervals around the globe, and more precisely located at the 36° north and south latitude; five in the northern hemisphere, five in the southern hemisphere, plus the north and south poles.
The reason why the Bermuda Triangle is more well-known depends on the fact that it is an area with more intense air and maritime traffic: while the other zones, although located in less frequented places, provide clear evidence of anomalies. He defined these areas as "Vortices of Evil."
Sanderson hypothesized that the warm and cold currents crossing these vortices could create electromagnetic disturbances, which would affect the instruments and ships, thus causing the disappearance of the same ships.
The Sargasso Sea
The portion of the Atlantic Ocean between the archipelagos of the Greater Antilles (to the west) and the Azores (to the east) is known for the algae that proliferate there (belonging to the genus Sargassum). These brown-colored algae surface in large quantities, giving some areas of the Sargasso Sea the appearance of a prairie.
One of the most peculiar characteristics of the Sargasso Sea is that it is always calm and, despite being at a relatively high latitude, the water is always unusually warm.
The Sargasso Sea was discovered on September 16, 1492, by Christopher Columbus on his first voyage to the Americas, when he was already 1,600 kilometers from the Canary Islands. Seeing the caravels sail "in the midst of very green marine patches," he thought he was nearing land and for a long time sounded the bottom without finding it, even using a rope 200 arms long.
A few days later, "the weeds were so thick that the sea seemed coagulated," but west of the 72° meridian, the weeds ceased (curiously, the same data provided by Sanderson).
Jules Verne also wrote about this sea in his book "The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century," describing it as larger than the Australian continent and as a real "lake in the open sea." According to Verne, the mythical Atlantis would be located right on the seabed of the Sargasso Sea.
The area in question has a mysterious reputation for "abducting" crews from their ships, leaving the empty vessels to continue their voyage.
One of the most famous incidents involves the French merchant ship Rosalie, a 222-ton vessel built in 1838, that departed from Hamburg headed for Havana, Cuba.
The ship was found on November 6, 1840, adrift off the coast of Cuba, without a crew and with sails still set. The only survivor was a canary in its cage. The hull was perfectly intact and its cargo was completely untouched, which ruled out an attack by pirates. Even the lifeboats were in place.
It was thus unclear how the people could have abandoned the ship, nor why they would have thrown themselves into the sea, as if in a collective frenzy. Of the mysteriously vanished crew, nothing was ever known again.
Another famous incident involves the Mary Celeste, a Canadian brigantine of 31 meters, launched in 1861 in Nova Scotia. On November 7, 1872, under the command of Captain Benjamin Briggs, the ship loaded a cargo of industrial alcohol on behalf of Meissner Ackermann & Coin and set sail from Staten Island, New York, for Genoa, in Italy.
In addition to the captain and a crew of seven other sailors, the ship had two other passengers: the captain's wife, Sarah E. Briggs, and their two-year-old daughter, Sophia Matilda.
On December 4, 1872, the brigantine was spotted by another ship, the Dei Gratia. The Mary Celeste was found between the Portuguese coast and the Azores, adrift with sails set towards the Strait of Gibraltar. There were no signs of the crew on board. A group of sailors from the Dei Gratia was sent aboard.
The Mary Celeste was deserted: the crew had disappeared. The ship was in fair condition, although completely waterlogged. Only one of the pumps was operational, and there was up to a meter of water in the hold. Some of its sails were torn.
The compass was broken, the sextant and marine chronometer were missing, and its only lifeboat was gone and appeared to have been intentionally launched rather than torn away by a storm, suggesting that the ship had been deliberately abandoned.
The cargo of 1701 barrels of alcohol was intact, though once in Genoa, it was discovered that nine barrels were empty. There were still six months' worth of water and food supplies on board. Most of the ship's papers were missing.
The last remaining entries reported that the ship had sighted Santa Maria in the Azores on November 25. The brigantine was towed into port in Gibraltar by the men of the Dei Gratia and was subsequently seized by British officials.
None of the men who disappeared from the Mary Celeste were ever found, nor was it ever known what happened to them. In 1873, two lifeboats were reported in the Spanish hinterland, one with an American flag on board, the other containing five bodies. However, these bodies were never identified.
Tierra del Fuego
Another trap for ships and sailors is represented by Tierra del Fuego, an archipelago off the southern tip of South America. During his first voyage around the world which began in 1520, the famous navigator Ferdinand Magellan spotted numerous moving lights near the archipelago.
Some thought these were torches lit on drifting rafts. The hypothesis inspired the navigator who named the archipelago "Tierra del Fuego" (Land of Fire). Chronicles tell of a terrible event that occurred many centuries later, which still remains shrouded in mystery.
In October 1913, sailors aboard a British ship spotted an unknown vessel adrift. When they boarded the ship, the sailors discovered that the ship's deck was completely rotten and, to their utmost horror, found 20 skeletons which presumably represented what remained of the original crew.
The skeletons had been found sitting in the usual manner, in the posture of those engaged in a long, albeit boring, oceanic crossing. All the goods and equipment on the ship were intact and nothing out of place. Documents found on board revealed that the ship had left a port in New Zealand 23 years earlier, headed for London, with a cargo of wool and frozen meat.
What happened to the ship and its crew remains a mystery. However, encounters with "ghost ships" or floating graveyards are not so rare in open sea.
The Michigan Triangle
Not only the sea harbors secrets and mysterious places. Lake Michigan in the United States, for example, has been the scene of numerous sightings of mysterious objects and ghost planes.
According to Dwight Bower, a maritime historian, in his book "Strange Adventures of the Great Lakes," the legend of the Michigan Triangle began in 1937 when Captain George Donner mysteriously disappeared from the cabin of his ship during a routine coal delivery.
It seems that the captain had specified that he wanted to be woken up when the ship reached the port. However, when his men went to his cabin, they could not find him, despite the door being locked from the inside.
Thirteen years later, on June 23, 1950, Northwes Airlines Flight 2051, a DC-4 flying from New York to Seattle with 55 passengers on board, vanished into thin air in the middle of the night as it was passing over the Michigan Triangle at an altitude of 1,100 meters.
Initially, it was thought that the plane had crashed into the lake, but divers' searches were unsuccessful. To this day, the wreckage has not been found, despite the Shipwreck Research Associates organizing an annual extensive search to try to explain the incident.
