When the Coast Guard boarded the ship, they were greeted only by a half-dead dog. There was no one else on board the Cuban ship "Rubicon", although the crew's personal belongings were in the cabins. The ship itself was in perfect order, but its towing line had been torn off and all the lifeboats were missing. It was in October 1944, the Second World War was in full swing, and yet it was completely incomprehensible what could force the crew to abandon the ship.
This incident made us recall again the mysterious events that took place at different times off the southeastern coast of the United States in the western part of the Atlantic Ocean in the area that is commonly called the Bermuda Triangle. It is named so because its sides stretch from a point north of Bermuda to the south of the Florida Peninsula, and then along the Bahamas to the island of Puerto Rico, where they again turn north and return to Bermuda forming a triangle in plan. Mysterious disappearances of people, ships, planes constantly occur here, large-scale natural disasters occur in the form of fierce storms, earthquakes and tsunamis. Here electromagnetic devices become unusable, compass arrows begin to rotate madly, forcing ship captains and aircraft pilots to lose their orientation in space.
Dangerous triangle
It all started back in 1840, when near Nassau, the main city of the Bahamas, a completely intact ship "Rosalia" was discovered, on board of which there was not a single person. As in the case of the "Rubicon", there was still one living creature on the ship, but not a dog, but a canary. All the lifeboats were intact, as was the cargo, in addition, the sailboat had a significant supply of fresh water and food. The investigation did not give any results, and the conclusion of the investigators was not at all convincing: the crew became the victim of a mass insanity, as a result of which all the sailors and the captain were thrown overboard.
Apparently, the captain and sailors of the sailing ship "Seabord", which was thrown aground in the summer of 1850 near the village of Easton Beach on the Atlantic coast of the United States, followed there. The residents of the village who boarded on board found coffee boiling on the stove of the galley, a fully served table in the ship's cabin, and the ship's dog was again the only living creature. Needless to say, the ship was in good order, all documents and cargo were in place, and the investigation was ineffectual?
Further more. In 1872, David Morehouse, the captain of the English brigade Dea Grazia, noticed the drifting brigantine Mary Selist. The inspection team that went aboard, represented by the first navigator and two sailors, did not find a single crew member. They found only a peacefully sleeping cat, which, of course, did not help to clarify the situation. Captain Briggs, his wife, little two-year-old daughter and 8 sailors disappeared without a trace. On the table in the wardroom lay bread, butter, bacon, eggs, and uncooled coffee. The captain's wife's sewing machine was open, and there were toys on the captain's bed. The cargo was also intact - 1,700 barrels of alcoholic beverages, as well as a six-month supply of fresh water and food. True, all navigation instruments, documents and the only lifeboat were missing.
The vessel was taken in tow and taken to Gibraltar, where it was thoroughly examined by Scotland Yard staff and scientists, but to no avail. The police version of the mutiny was clearly far-fetched. After a lengthy trial, the London Lloyd's Insurance Society paid the crew of the Day Grace a reward for the "rescue" of "Mary Selist" and put forward a very unusual version explaining the loss of people. According to the insurers, the crew of the brigantine was greatly frightened by the outbreak of alcohol fumes, which forced them to leave the ship and go on boats into the ocean, where they died. In my opinion, complete nonsense, like the police version.
And in 1881 the strangest and most mystical incident occurred. The English ship "Ellen Austin", which found a deserted schooner in the Central Atlantic, landed a small crew on it, after which both ships headed for the island of Newfoundland. After some time, the ships lost each other due to the thick fog descending on the sea. When, a few days later, "Ellen Austin" found the schooner, there was no one there. Captain "Ellen Austin" showed perseverance and, despite the reluctance of the sailors, sent more people to the schooner, because there was a large cargo of valuable mahogany on board. And then a terrible storm began, the ships went to sea again, and the schooner disappeared forever with a new crew.
The mysterious disappearances continued in the 20th century. In January 1921, the five-mast schooner Carroll A. Deering ran aground. Once again, a familiar picture: food was ready in the galley, but not a single sailor, and only two cats were alive. It is still unknown what happened to the crew of the ship, consisting of 12 people. How, in fact, the fate of the sailors of the schooner "Gloria Colita" from the Caribbean island of St. Vincent, discovered in February 1940 in the Gulf of Mexico and many other ships, is absolutely incomprehensible.
More recently, in 2020, a now-grounded Cuban Coast Guard patrol discovered a ship that had run aground. The corroded hull belonged to the SS Cotopaxi, which disappeared in 1923 in the Bermuda Triangle. Those who boarded the ship found the engine room intact and the presence of all the lifeboats.
The numbers are impressive, because only after 1945, in the area of the Bermuda Triangle, more than 100 ships, planes and more than a thousand people disappeared without a trace.
Not a pacific ocean at all
Of course, the notorious triangle is clearly the leader in the number of mysterious incidents, but one should not forget that mysterious events took place in other parts of the world.
In June 1947, several radio stations caught a desperate call for help from the Dutch ship Urang Medan. “SOS ... SOS ... All the officers, including the captain, lie dead in the navigator's room and on the bridge. Probably, the whole ship's crew is dead ... Perhaps, I am the only one left alive ... ", - the radio operator reported. This was followed by an indecipherable series of dots and dashes, followed by a short but distinct message: "I am dying." When the radio signal was localized, it became clear that the ship was in distress in the Malacca Strait, located between the Malay Peninsula and the Indonesian island of Sumatra.
A call for help was transmitted to all nearby ships, and within a few hours the Silver Star landed a rescue team on Urang Medan. The spectacle presented to the rescuers was terrible - the whole team was dead. The captain of the ship was lying on the bridge, the officers and sailors were in the helm and navigational rooms, in the wardroom. A dead radio operator was also found at his workplace, until the last moment, trying to report the tragedy. The ship's dog was also killed, his face bared, as if he was about to attack someone. The victims did not have any wounds on the body, or injuries, but on all faces turned in one direction, an expression of horror was frozen.
The captain of the Silver Star immediately rejected the version of the pirate attack, since the cargo and all the valuables were in place, but he was forced to abandon the towing of the Urang Medan to the port, as acrid smoke began to rise from the lower decks of the ship. And as soon as the rescuers had time to go to their ship, the "Urang Medan" exploded. So the mystery of the death of the crew of the Urang Medan ship has not yet been revealed, although a number of experts believe that the cause of death of people is poisonous gas, which may have been transported in the hold of the ship.
The mysterious disappearances of the crews continued. For example, in 1955, the American yacht MV Elita was found in the Pacific Ocean with a full supply of water and food, but no crew. At the same time, near the island of Fiji, the ship "Joyt" was discovered, which was sailing from Western Samoa to the Tokelau archipelago. 36 people aboard the Joyt disappeared. In 1960, two British yachts were in the same position, but in the Atlantic Ocean, and ten years later, the British dry cargo ship Milton and the Norwegian fishing vessel Anna were completely depopulated.
Abnormal zones
There are many dangerous zones for navigation on our planet. One of the most famous such places is the so-called "Devil's Sea", located in the Pacific Ocean south of the Japanese islands. You will not find this sea on any map, only sailors know perfectly well where it is and do everything to get around it. This is not surprising, because 9 ships have disappeared without a trace here, and all living creatures keep away from this part of the ocean, where storms begin quite suddenly, just as suddenly turning into dead calm. In this zone, tropical cyclones and typhoons arise, and the ocean floor is in the process of active formation, and as a result of seismic activity, new volcanic islands constantly appear and disappear.
Sailors do not like the strait at the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa. Standing waves, or as they are also called "killer waves", whose height reaches more than 30 meters, have caused the death of a large number of ships. Moreover, these waves do not change their height for a long time, and a deep depression is formed in front of them. It is almost impossible to escape in such a situation. The eastern part of the Indian Ocean with the Persian Gulf became famous for its giant glowing and rotating circles on the surface of the water. Until now, scientists have not been able to explain the reason for the ideal geometric shape of these circles, the enormous speed of their rotation and the nature of the rays emanating from one center.
No less famous is the Maelstrom whirlpool, which appears twice a day off the north-western coast of Norway. You can imagine a huge crater, and in its center is a giant depression, the water level in which is tens of meters below the ocean level. A fantastic picture, which at one time was well described by Edgar Poe. Moreover, about once every hundred days, the whirlpool changes its direction to the opposite. The sight is not for the faint of heart.
Sad statistics
Unfortunately, the crews of the ships disappear in the 21st century as well. The truth here is largely the fault lies with modern pirates, especially active in the African continent. However, the mysterious disappearances of the crews also continue.
In 2003, an aircraft of the Australian Coast Guard discovered the Indonesian schooner High Em 6, whose holds were full of caught mackerel. Where the 14 sailors went is a mystery. In 2006, in the same area, a completely deserted tanker Yan Seng was found. In the same year, the Italian coast guard did not find any people, having detained the two-masted sailing ship "Bel Amica" off the coast of Sardinia.
This problem has not spared our country either. In January 2008, the press service of the Russian Ministry of Transport announced the loss of communication with the Russian dry cargo ship "Captain Uskov" moving from Nakhodka to Hong Kong. Neither the bulk carrier nor 17 of its crew were ever found. Only in February of the same year, the Japanese coast guard found a deserted motorized rescue boat from a missing ship.
These sad statistics are endless and each new year adds sad and unsolved events. Apparently, humanity will have to come to terms with the fact that there are a number of regions on our planet where inexplicable accidents occur with ships, planes and their crews.
Voice of the sea
Such incidents have always occurred, but no one has yet given an answer to the question of their causes. One of the most reasonable versions was proposed back in 1937 by the Soviet hydrophysicist Vasily Shuleikin. Passing through the Kara Sea on the Taimyr hydrographic vessel, one of the specialists drew attention to the fact that when he brought a balloon filled with hydrogen closer to his ear, he felt a sharp pain in the eardrum. He pushed the ball away - the pain was gone. The future academician Vasily Shuleikin was on the same ship. He became interested in a strange phenomenon and soon published an article in which he argued that the wind sweeping over the crests of the waves of a stormy sea excites in the air low-frequency infrasonic vibrations that are not audible to our ears, which are very harmful to humans. Moreover, at a frequency below 15 hertz, the effect increases: not only the eardrum suffers, but also a disorder of the brain centers, for example, of vision, occurs, and at a frequency below 7 hertz, under certain conditions, people die.
In other words, somewhere a storm is raging, a generator appears there - a source of infrasound, the waves of which travel very far. It was the observer on the Taimyr that was able to "hear" thanks to the shell filled with hydrogen, which became a resonator of these infrasonic vibrations, painful for the human ear. Vasily Shuleikin called this effect “the voice of the sea”.
When studying the physiological effect of high-intensity infrasound on a living organism, amazing phenomena were discovered. Animals experience a sense of anxiety, unreasonable fear. This is also confirmed by volunteer researchers who have visited experimental infrasound chambers.
As the experiments of the French professor Gavreau have shown, infrasound with a frequency of 7 Hz is fatal to the body. And during a storm in the sea, infrasound is generated with a frequency of about 6 Hz. If the intensity of the vibrations is less than lethal, a wave of unreasonable fear and horror falls on people. This state is intensified even more if the hull or masts of the ship fall into resonance and become, as it were, a secondary source of infrasound, under the influence of which the distraught crew leaves the ship in panic. It is not for nothing that many of these ships have broken masts, although weather reports indicate that there are no strong winds in the area.
Maybe this is the solution to the mysterious disappearances of the crews of the ships?