A Deadly Triangle

America's fascination with the far-out fringes of scientific theory has been amply demonstrated by the phenomenal success of books ranging from Chariots of the Gods?, which contends that the earth was visited by superintelligent extraterrestrial beings in prehistoric times, to The Secret Life of Plants, which argues that plants think, are capable of extrasensory perception, and even possess souls. Now another such literary endeavor has made its way onto the bestseller lists: The Bermuda Triangle (Doubleday; $7.95) by Charles Berlitz, grandson of the language-school founder. Like its predecessors, Triangle takes off from established facts, then proceeds to lace its theses with a hodgepodge of half-truths, unsubstantiated reports and unsubstantial science.

The area celebrated by Berlitz is the heavily traveled stretch of sea extending roughly from Bermuda in the north to Miami and beyond Puerto Rico on the south. It has been known variously as the Triangle of Death, the Devil's Triangle and the Hoodoo Sea. Berlitz reports that some 100 ships and planes carrying a total of more than 1,000 persons have mysteriously disappeared without a trace while traversing the triangle, most of them since 1945. Those statistics may well be the most indisputable facts in the book.

Berlitz recites the familiar roll call of the triangle's victims--ranging from large ships like the 425-ft. freighter Marine Sulphur Queen, which disappeared off the Dry Tortugas in 1963, to small yachts, like the ocean racer Revonoc, which vanished off Florida in 1967. He also makes much of the famous "lost patrol" incident in December 1945, when five Navy torpedo bombers on a training flight, as well as a flying boat sent out to search for them, seemed to vanish into thin air. Heightening the sense of mystery, Berlitz cites reports of strangely spinning compasses and unexplained electrical failures aboard ships and planes crossing the triangle. He also talks of great waterspouts and baffling stretches of "white water" that were noted by navigators who sailed as long ago as Columbus. He provides testimony from a 20th century skipper who says his 160-ft. tug was yanked for a few moments by weird forces, almost as if "somebody wanted us to be in another place from where we were going."

To explain such strange happenings, Berlitz cites a number of imaginative possibilities: that missing craft may have been whisked off by flying saucers or sucked in by "magnetic vortices" that are linked with "a different point in time and space." He also suggests that passing planes and ships may trigger powerful energy sources produced long ago by an ancient civilization that sank to the bottom of the sea. (Berlitz has also written a book about Atlantis, the lost civilization.) These ancient machines then cause the destruction--Berlitz does not explain how--of the unwary craft. He also cites another theory: an advanced race of beings living deep in the earth may be causing the mischief.

"The book is preposterous," says Harvard's venerable historian, Samuel Eliot Morison, who sailed the area himself before writing his Pulitzer-prize-winning biography of Columbus, Admiral of the Ocean Sea. Admiral Morison takes issue particularly with reports in Triangle attributed to Columbus. "It's almost all hooey. Columbus never reported seeing white water in the area. None of the early navigators made any complaints about it. The whole Spanish Main went through it." Says University of Miami Oceanographer Claes Rooth: "If there ever was a pseudo topic, it's the Bermuda triangle." Rooth attributes many of the disappearances to violent weather occurring suddenly over the warm water in the triangle. "It is like being hit by a tornado," he says. "Nice weather conditions in the area lull you into a sense of false security." Other experts point out that the swift current of the Gulf Stream quickly carries debris far from an accident site; "lost without a trace" thus becomes easily understandable.

Rain Clutter. The Coast Guard in Miami responds to the many inquiries about the mysteries of the triangle with a prepared handout that presents a rational explanation of the hazards in the area. "It has been our experience," the Coast Guard says, "that the combined forces of nature and unpredictability of mankind outdo even the most farfetched science fiction many times each year." The handout notes that the triangle is one of two places where magnetic compasses point to true north--and thus may be confusing to navigators who are not used to compass variations.

The Coast Guard denies several of Berlitz's specific allegations, including the sudden disappearance of the Queen Elizabeth 2 from the radarscope of a Coast Guard vessel sailing near by in the triangle. There is no record of this event on any of its ships' logs, the Coast Guard says. But even if it were recorded, a spokesman points out, the momentary disappearance of a ship on a radar screen is a common occurrence, the result of rain clutter, sea "return" or other natural causes. Berlitz's claim that several planes have "mysteriously disintegrated over land within a short distance of the Miami airport, including Eastern Airlines Flight 401," is disputed by Jim Fraser, the Federal Aviation Administration coordinator in the Miami area. "The only time Flight 401 disintegrated was when it hit the ground," he says.

Finally, the triangle is no more prone to disappearances than other busy ocean regions. In fact, a Navy spokesman notes, "many, many more disappearances" have occurred over the years in the heavily traveled Sable triangle, bounded by Sable Island (off Nova Scotia), the Azores and Iceland. His challenge to Charles Berlitz: "Why not a book on the Sable triangle?"

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