The Bermuda Triangle: Real Danger or Sea Legend?

I love these because Simon just says whatever pops in his head while reading the script. Like “isn’t the Mariana Trench near there?” No, wrong ocean, but let’s see where he’s going with this.

As a kid I thought the Bermuda Triangle and Quicksand would play a bigger role in adult life…

As a Bermudian I feel like I should point out the fact that almost all the stories about the Bermuda Triangle involve incidents that happened just off the coast of Florida or the Bahamas. It really should be the Floridian Triangle

Simon, if you don’t already have an episode on Rogue Waves I’m sure you would enjoy learning about them!

I grew up on the East Coast of Florida. The weather conditions in that area of the ocean can go from placid to end of the world very quickly and without much warning. Plus, it's quite vast.

Naval architect here: Cyclops was once of a class of four colliers that were (allegedly) not very well built. Ship science was not as developed then, and practices that we now know to be bad were quite common. Two of her sisters are known to have disappeared in bad weather, and her route would have brought her into a severe storm. She was also carrying manganese, which is much denser than the coal she was designed for. Plus, she was overloaded because it was wartime and the manganese was desperately needed for the steel industry. Given that she was already overloaded, poorly designed, her design was likely susceptible to sinking in bad weather, and the weather was bad, it doesn’t take a huge leap of faith to guess that she probably sank in bad weather.

For Simon, and those wondering, a league is roughly 3 miles, or 3 nautical miles. It was intended to be the distance a person can walk in an hour. It's not considered an official measurement any more. But I like to use it.

Looks like Simon needs to make a Geographics video on the Mariana Trench. I'm actually surprised he hasn't already

People who refuse to assume that there is a rational explanation because they think aliens and ghosts are more interesting remind me of the Douglas Adams quote: “Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?”

My favorite is "The Alaska Triangle" which is the area where most people in Alaska tend to go missing. I live in Alaska. It is huge and empty and their triangle neatly covers the areas where 99% of Alaskans live 😂

My childhood imagination portrayed the Bermuda Triangle as a stormy, foggy place with magnetic mountains that stripped away bolts from ships and aeroplanes.

The Mariana Trench is south of Japan, in the Pacific. The Bermuda Triangle is in the Atlantic.

I've been through the Bermuda Traingle 37 times and I'm still here....or AM I? Am I in a different reality, where my original reality is searching the bottom of the sea for our sunken submarine?

As a sailor stationed aboard the USS Assurance (AG-521) in 1974-1975, I, and 11 other of my colleagues known as Ocean System Technicians, were tasked with tracking and identifying Soviet nuclear submarines utilizing what is referred to as a passive Towed Array Sound Surveillance System with the acronym of TASS, consisting of a very long cable deployed from a reel mounted on the fantail of the ship, with hydrophones integrated within the cable. Detected signals from surface or subsurface contacts were then relayed to the TASS van which housed the electronic processing equipment to identify the target with room enough for the technicians on duty to interpret range, course, depth, and speed. The U.S.S. Assurance was originally commissioned in the late 1950's, a 190 foot all wooden, flat bottom, twin screw mine sweeper, that was later repurposed and converted into an intelligence gathering platform specifically designed to track and bedevil Russian nuclear submarines. Certainly, we became the bane of existence to many a Soviet boomer sub Captain, thwarting their efforts to remain undetected deep below in the murky depths of Davy Jones locker, as they lay in wait on station off the coast of the United States for orders from the Kremlin to surreptitiously launch their long-range subsonic land attack nuclear missiles into the heartland of their archenemy, as we methodically and clandestinely plied the waters off the east coast of the United States, and beyond. During one of our intelligence gathering operations calling for us to make our way into and through the area known as the Bermuda Triangle while making a transatlantic crossing ultimately taking us into the Mediterranean Sea to further complicate and vex the lives of our adversaries (a story for another time), we experienced a perplexing "anomaly". It was about 2200 hours local, and off the port bow, there appeared a red signal flare rising into the dark sky, the international maritime distress signal known to all sailors. Even though we were conducting ops, we were duty bound to alter our course to investigate and lend assistance if at all possible. At our speed of approximately 3 knots (standard speed when towing the hydrophone array), it took a while to reach the area from which the red flare had been sighted, but upon arriving, we found nothing despite the efforts of the signalman called to the bridge, searching for signs of life with the signal light brightly illuminating a relatively large swath of inky black still water. Finding nothing, we resumed course until again, a short time later, a red flare appeared in front of us, but now off our starboard bow. Dutifully, we once again changed course to investigate, and when we arrived in the area where the source of the flare should have been, there was not a trace of a ship, a boat, a life raft, nor poor soul clinging to life bobbing in a life vest. This game of cat and mouse continued over the course of the next 5 hours with virtually all hands on deck to witness the event as word had spread fast. More than a few sailors, many considered as "salts", deemed so for their many years of sea duty, were openly terrified, some nearly breaking out in an uncontrollable panic, given the fact that we were deep into the infamous Bermuda triangle, notorious among mariners for the disappearance of hundreds of sailors and airmen, not knowing if this was to be our fate as well. The ominous red flare anomaly continued to alternately appear starboard and then to port with intervals of 10 to 15 minutes, until our Captain finally growing weary of the cat and mouse game, ordered the bridge officer to resume course and give it no further heed in spite of the phenomenon continuing until nearly 0300. Was it aliens attempting to lure us into a space/time vortex where we were to remain captive in an alternate universe? Or, the ghosts of some hapless souls who lost their lives in the notorious Devil's triangle? I have no idea. I just know what I witnessed, and there were a lot of sleepless, freaked out sailors onboard that night.

You know Simon, there’s a theory that The Eye of the Sahara is actually the remnants of Atlantis. It’s a very compelling ( and entertaining) theory that would make for a good Decoding the Unknown

The lack of any distress call is the part that weirds me out in the cases where there was none. Ships take a while to sink, so normally you’d be able to send an SOS. I’m not suggesting anything supernatural or whatever, but the idea of a ship just sinking or otherwise disappearing without even having time to send a distress signal is still kind of disturbing.

Speaking of how difficult it is to find stuff in the ocean, I was part of a crew searching for a downed aircraft in the Sulu Sea (Philippines) years ago. The area we searched was less than 100km2, and we KNEW the plane was in there somewhere, and the maximum depth was only 1,000m (Bermuda triangle has an average depth of around 4,000m). 5 weeks of side-scan and ROV surveys turned up nothing. To not find anything in the Bermuda triangle isn't surprising. In fact if they did find anything they were looking for, THAT would be the surprise....

Hi Simon. My late father was a Naval Aviator and he was on the search for Flight 19. He flew out of NAS Banana River FL. He always had a theory that the flight actually got lost became disoriented in fog and didn't trust their instruments, what we now call spacial disorientation, and flew north and away from Florida. He figured that they flew north and out to sea. When they radioed that the "Ocean does not look right." To him and others that could only mean that they had flown out over deeper water because as you know water will look different from the air as it gets deeper. Eventually, you run out of fuel, but by then you are well out of radio range.   Also, this was in the days when pilots had to carry navigation boards and instruments with them. My dad had been lost just a week before in an Avenger when he was flying a training mission with a submarine. Realizing he had not gotten the bearing and range from the sub as he left and knowing that he was off Florida he knew that all he had to do was fly west and eventually he would see land. All it took was to fight the "I'm lost" panic that sets in and think rationally. He did this and saw land. After 15 minutes he saw land and a road, so he flew low enough to read a few local billboards and finally got his bearings back. Again he stressed overcoming the panic reaction   There were many aircraft that took off for over-water flights land-based or carrier and the aircraft never was seen again. Navigation was the key skill and single-engine aircraft did not carry a navigator who was an expert. I've sailed on warships at least 20 times and it is never as transiting the English Channel

I love when Simon says He's heard of this before, when he's done like 8 other videos talking about it.

Finally this video is released! Simon has been referring to it. I searched all the past videos on all of Simon’s channels and couldn’t find it. Glad I was right😉💜