2020-02-01_Fortean_Times

SDSDSVDSVS

ULRICHMAGINtrawlsthe

depthsoftheInternetfor

shipssupposedlylostin

theBermudaTriangle

R

ecently, Itriedmy

hand at digital

detectivework, using

onlineresources to

tackle severa lBermudaTriangle

mysteriesthat remain unsolved.

My firstforaywas an attempt to

solvethe enigma of whetherthree

shipsmenti oned in eachand every

book on theTriangle had actually

existed and whether theyreally

vanished without trace.Ihad

the idea whilerere adingDavid

Kusche’sTheBermuda Triangle

Mystery–Solved!,the first and

probablybest of the debunking

books on the subject.^1 As Kusche

could find no original 19thcentury

accountsforthese cases,Ithought

an online search waswoerthwhile.

From Sanderson and Berlitz

onwards, each listing of triangle

victims has included thevessels

Lotta(vanished 1866nearHaiti),

Viego(1868), andMiramon(1884,

en route to NewOrleans). Kusche

drew ablank on all three, and

concludedthatthe incidentswere

wholly imaginary.^2 If yousearch

forthe names with Google books

youget severa ldozenTriangle and

mysterybooks whichnamedrop

them, butIencountered not

asinglereferenceinany

contemporarynewspaperorin

anybook that did not deal with

theTriangle.Another19thcentury

caseforwhichKuschefound no

solutionwasthe strange incident

of theEllenAustinin 1881.

According to the traditionalstory,

she encountered anabandoned

schooner in themid-Atlantic

and putasalvage crew aboardto

investigate; they, too,vanished

withouttrace.

Thefirstsourceforthis

tale appearstobeour fortean

ancestor RupertTGould, in his

TheStarg azer Talksof 1944,but he

provided noreferences.Kusche

could not find anycontemporary

news accounts,althoughresearch

in theNautical ResearchJournalof

1956 at leastmanagedtoconfirm

that the ship hadexisted.^3

Ithis case,Ifoundareal

incident, but from 1855not 1881:

“Disasters. [...] Brig Florence,at

this port from Boston, for Darien,

Geo., was fallen in with 2nd April,

10 p.m., having been dismasted and

otherwise injured the dayprevious,

in aseveregale from S. S. E. toW.

Captain and crew taken off and

carriedtoSavannah,byship Ellen

Austin,Tucker.”^4

However,this real-lifeevent did

not seem to be the one on which

Gould’sreportwasbased, so I

searched deeper andfound the

original–but in aworkoffiction.

In his storyBull’sYarn,the

Englishnovelist and short story

writer MorleyRoberts (1857-

1942) has his heroes discoveran

old Frenchnewspaper clipping on

marinemysteries:

“I read in English asmuch of

it asIcould makeout and what I

translated is heretolook at [...]

This is all thatwaslegible:

‘Science seeks...ofthese

terrifying disappearances...of

theMarie Celeste.... that amongst

the fatalistic impressions...by

this vanishings of thirteen people

after thirteen days navigation.

‘The episode of theDuke of

Portlandis still morestriking as

one discerns in it something of an

obstinate purpose, looking like

aslaug hter willedby fate.Inthe

winter of 1889 the three masted

American barque theEllenAustin

met in the Atlantic the big sailing

ship theDuke ofPortlandbound

from NewYorkfor London with

acargo of furniture.Thecrew

had vanished ...mysterious ... of

theMarie Celeste...The boats

(on board) and the most...inall

parts of the ship.The vesselwas so

favourably situatedfornavigation

thatthe captain of theEllenAustin

scrupled toabandon her on the

opensea (au large)and undertook

...riskof...sentonboard(fit

passer)theDuke(of Portland)men

to work her andrelieve each other

at the wheel.

‘In thefollowing night there

was...swell andmuch fog...and

the captainof(theEllen Austin)

waitedfor sunrise...searchof

the sailing ship of whichtheyhad

lost sight(literally‘the escaped

ship’). He (found) her easilybut

they neversaw again theable

seamen sent on boardher.They

had disappeared inexplicably,just

as the crew of theDukeofPortland

had disappeared.Theyhad not

even touched the provisions they

took with them...but she ...’ ”^5

Thelacunæare in the original

and areexplainedbythe poor

condition of the newspaper

clipping, of whichRoberts

even reproduceda“facsimile”.

Interestingly, one of Roberts’s

editorsadds: “It isworth noting

that Roberts’sinspiration forthis

storywas areal ship calledthe

EllenAustinand similarevents to

those described whichactually

occurred in 1881rather than

1889.”

This hardlyhelps, as the oldest

variantofthe alleged 1881

source is Gould, in 1944.Roberts

predates him and maywell have

been his source. Gouldwasa

carefulworker,but in this case he

appearstohave mistakenafiction

presented asagenuineaccount

forthe real thing.

TheInternet can be used to

get to the bottomofafortean

story in variousways, andeven

absence can beevidence.The

fact that notasinglereference

to theLotta,Viego,andMiramon

can befound in Google books nor

in anyofthe English language

newspapers online–and that

the onlyreferences to these

vanishingships areinbooks on

the BermudaTriangle–does not

prove the episodes areinvented,

butitmakesthis explanation,

first proposedby Kusche, more

likely. That severa lsearch engine

trawls withvariants of the names

and dates could not detect any

contemporarytrace of these three

incidents in thevast data bank

that is the Internet certainly

indicates (though does not prove)

that noneexist. Unlessthe alle ged

originalFrench source turns up,

we can safelyassumethat the

Ellen Austinstor y, as relatedby

Gould,wasafabrication created

forapiece of fiction.Perhapswe

can use onlinesearch engines that

go deep into our printed past as

agauge to thereliability of other

stories presented as historical

forteanabyseein gwhetherthey

were actually reported in times

past.

NOTES

1 Lawrence DavidKusche,Die Rätsel

desBermuda-Dreieckssindgelöst!,

Rowohlt, 1980 (original:TheBermuda

Triang le Myster y–Solv ed!,Harper &

Row 1975).

2 Kusche,p51.

3 NauticalResearch Journal1956,

p55.

4 TheSailor’sMagazine,American

Seamen’s Frien dSociety,June1855,

p312.

5 MorleyRobe rts,Followers of the

Sea:ASet of Sea-Comedies,ENash

and Grayson Ltd, 1923; reprinted

in Markus Neacey (ed.),Sele cted

Stories of MorleyRoberts,Victorian

SecretsLtd, 2015.

2 ULRICH MAGINis alongtime

contributor to FT and the author

ofInvestigating the Impossible

(2011).HelivesinGermany.

TheDigital Triangle

FT389 53

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