Bermuda Triangle, and El Faro
With El Faro tragedy, fresh waves of interest in a legendary phenomenon.
While the search continues for missing crew members, the investigation of precisely what caused the sinking of the freighter El Faro is underway.
It is known that the crew had issued a distress call, that the ship had lost propulsion, and that it had encountered the circulation of Hurricane Joaquin, which eventually exploded into a dangerous Category 4 storm with 140 m.p.h. winds.
The tragic encounter occurred within the region famously known as "the Bermuda Triangle."
In recent years we haven't heard much about the phenomenon, but in its '70s heyday it was the stuff of books, movies, TV specials, a fantastic speculation invoking everything from horrific sea creatures to UFOs.
It is so named because the area is triangular, unofficially forming an equilateral triangle, with the 1,000-mile sides extending from near the Southeast Florida Coast to Puerto Rico to Bermuda. We say unofficially, because the region has no official designation.
As for the alleged mysterious forces contributing to an inordinate number of disappearances through the years, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says look first to the most mystifying and mysterious of them all: Nature.
The Gulf Stream, one of the planet's most-important heat-transfer agents, runs through the Bermuda Triangle. The stream's ultra-warm waters are notorious for brewing violent weather.
The plentiful presence of Caribbean islands mean plentiful shallow, hazardous waters.
And as the NOAA points out, the Bermuda Triangle is a hotbed for tropical storms.
One of the key questions to be answered is how El Faro ended up in the path of Joaquin. It left Jacksonville for Puerto Rico on the night of Sept. 29, after the National Hurricane Center warned that Joaquin would become a hurricane in 24 hours.
Historically brisk hurricane traffic, of course, would make the Bermuda Triangle that much more dangerous.
But by NOAA's reckoning, the ocean, itself, is a dangerous place, and no evidence suggests that the Bermuda Triangle has a monopoly on mysterious incidents.
It so happens that the Bermuda Triangle is a very well-traveled place -- by man, and hurricanes.