How Did the Bermuda Triangle Form?

Spanning some 440,000 square miles, the Bermuda Triangle--also known as "The Devil's Triangle"--is rightfully regarded as one of the world's most intimidating and forbidding locales for sailing. More than 200 disappearances have been documented there. Yet it's among the world's busiest, most heavily traveled shipping lanes, where the weather is ever unpredictable, and can literally turn on a dime. The aura of mystery surrounding lost planes and ships has been a running theme in the area since Christopher Columbus's time, but the legend didn't gain ground until the 1960s, when a writer coined the name for the area that has held sway in the public mind--and provided no lack of fodder for doubter and skeptic alike.

Geography

In keeping with its reputation, the Bermuda Triangle's boundaries aren't defined on maps, but by popular consensus. The most commonly depicted area is bordered by Norfolk, Virginia, to the north, the island of Bermuda in the west and San Juan, Puerto Rico, to the south. The city of Miami completes the Triangle's easternmost point. This configuration is the most commonly accepted one, although some writers--such as John Spencer, in his 1969 book, "Limbo Of The Lost"--have tried to justify adding places like the Gulf of Mexico by arguing that the area has no real shape. However, this argument has not been commonly accepted.

History

During the 1950s, pilots and shippers referred to "The Triangle"--a term that George X. Sand coined in an October 1952 "Fate" magazine article focusing on such famous mysteries as Flight 19, in which five airplanes had vanished seven years earlier during a training mission over Florida. By the 1960s, "The Deadly Triangle" had become the popular term, which surfaced in Dale Titler's 1962 account, "Wings Of Mystery." Even so, none of those phrases summarized the phenomenon in purely geographic terms. All that changed in February 1964, with "Argosy"'s publication of Vincent Gaddis's article, "The Deadly Bermuda Triangle," yielding the term that captured public imagination--even if he added "in or about this area" as a qualifying phrase. Gaddis, a paranormal chronicler often compared to his 1920s- and 1930s-era counterpart, Charles Fort, further developed his themes in a 1965 book, "Invisible Horizons," devoting an entire chapter to "The Triangle Of Death."

Time Frame

Now that it had been named and quantified for a mass audience, interest in the Bermuda Triangle as a phenomenon exploded in the early 1970s. Numerous magazine and newspaper articles led the way, followed by the success of Charles Berlitz's 1974 overview, "The Bermuda Triangle." That same year, Richard Winer also scored with "The Devil's Triangle," which inevitably led to a 1975 sequel, "The Devil's Triangle 2." A third book, "From The Devil's Triangle To The Devil's Jaw,"appeared in 1977, which offered an overview of incidents that had occurred on all the world's major bodies of water. These successes mirrored a strong interest in paranormal subjects, as exemplified by Swiss author Erich von Daniken's best-selling "Chariots of the Gods" series of books. Inevitably, many of the subjects explored in previous Bermuda Triangle books--such as the Flight 19 mystery--became fodder for TV documentaries, specials and shows like "In Search Of...", hosted by TV's Mr. Spock--Leonard Nimoy, of "Star Trek" fame.

Effects

For outsiders, the Bermuda Triangle had taken on all the trappings of a cottage industry. As with any trend, however, some type of backlash seemed inevitable.Skeptics fought back, notably in forming Committee for Scientific Investigation of Claims Of The Paranormal, or CSICOP. Lawrence Kusche became a member shortly after publishing "The Bermuda Triangle Mystery: Solved," and "The Disappearance Of Flight 19," which appeared in 1975 and 1980, respectively. In both books, Kusche--himself a flight instructor, and pilot--essentially argued that most incidents could be put down to storms, or accidents, and charged that most writers had uncritically repeated error-prone accounts. Ironically, despite similar claims of sloppiness made against Kusche, his book remains the major one in print today.

Significance

Books attempting to explain away the Bermuda Triangle phenomenon still appear at a slower pace--and with less fanfare than in the 1970s--although paranormal books remain a reliable staple of any publishing house's catalog. As skeptics have pointed out, the number of shipwrecks and missing vessels and planes should not be considered unusual for an area ringed by rogue waves, waterspouts and hurricanes that can appear without warning, and overtake even the most experienced sailor. Similarly, the vastness of the area should not surprise observers who wonder why bodies and wreckage are not readily found, if at all--yet that hasn't stopped the debates from continuing. If nothing else, the passion surrounding the Bermuda Triangle proves that, all protests aside, armchair detectives love nothing more than a good mystery--preferably one that escapes an easy solution.

Resources

• The Bermuda Triangle In History: A Shape Takes Form
• Altered Dimensions Entry On The Bermuda Triangle
• The Skeptic's Dictionary: Bermuda Triangle Page