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Uncover the story of the unsinkable ghost ship that vanished and drifted, leaving experts baffled. Join us as we unveil the mystery, shedding light on the chilling tale of Bermuda's lost and found maritime puzzle. Subscribe now to explore the haunting depths of the unknown!
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Transcript
00:00 The moon shines brightly and illuminates the black water of the ocean.
00:04 Thick fog descends on it in ominous silence.
00:08 Then, it's suddenly broken by the creaking of wooden boards,
00:12 followed by a rippling of the waves.
00:14 Through the fog, you see the outline of an old large ship.
00:19 Its hull is rusty, and a strange cold is coming from it.
00:23 But the most unsettling thing is that there's no one on the deck.
00:28 The ship sails without a crew.
00:31 No, this isn't a mythical flying Dutchman, but a very real ghost ship.
00:37 September 2nd, 2019.
00:40 The British Royal Navy's ice patrol ship, called the HMS Protector,
00:44 sails through the calm waters of the Atlantic Ocean.
00:47 The time is 11pm.
00:49 Some of the ship's crew are on deck, while others are sleeping in their cabins.
00:54 The captain steers the ship and looks straight at the horizon.
00:58 The sky is lit up by an orange twilight, and clouds float in the distance.
01:03 Suddenly, against this beautiful landscape,
01:06 one of the sailors notices the black silhouette of an unknown ship.
01:11 The captain slows down and steers the ship a little closer to the mysterious vessel.
01:17 This is an old cargo ship, 250 feet long.
01:21 Attempts to contact the crew members lead to nothing.
01:25 It seems the unknown boat is floating in the ocean by itself.
01:30 There's no one on board.
01:32 At least, no one alive.
01:35 The deck of the ship creaks from rocking on the waves.
01:38 The sun sinks below the horizon, and it gets dark.
01:42 The ship looks terrifying.
01:44 British sailors don't dare to climb on that strange deck.
01:48 They take a photo, post it on the internet, and sail away.
01:53 Many people on the internet will assume the sailors met a real ghost ship.
01:58 Five months later, we're in the village of Ballycotton in County Cork, Ireland.
02:04 A local leaves the house early in the morning to go for a daily run.
02:08 Music in his headphones, fresh cool air, and a scenic route are ideal conditions for a good workout.
02:15 The jogger runs along the road on the coast of the Celtic Sea.
02:19 There was a strong storm last night, and now the sea looks calm.
02:23 The man runs along the top of a low cliff and notices a huge vessel.
02:29 An old, rusty cargo ship, 250 feet long, lies on the beach, right among the rocks.
02:36 No people on board.
02:38 It seems the ship has been here for ages, but the local is sure this vessel wasn't here yesterday.
02:45 A little later, it turns out this is the same ship that the sailors from the HMS Protector saw five months ago,
02:53 thousands of miles from this place.
02:56 The cargo ship, called the Alta, was built in 1976.
03:02 Nobody knows who used it all this time and for what purposes.
03:06 It's only known that in 2017, the ship was purchased by a new owner and marked with the flag of Tanzania.
03:14 It's important to say that almost all cargo ships are equipped with AIS, automatic identification system,
03:21 which is needed to track ship movements in the ocean.
03:24 Since 2015, something strange started happening with the Alta's AIS.
03:30 The ship disappeared from the satellites, then reappeared again.
03:35 Over the past few years, this ship had changed several names and flags.
03:39 It's not surprising that its AIS shut off and turned on numerous times.
03:44 It's said that some of those who disable AIS on their ships do so to hide outlaw activities.
03:51 The ship's captain, whoever it was, clearly didn't want to show the Alta's movements.
03:56 As AIS showed in 2017, the ship had sailed near Greek port cities.
04:02 The Alta made 12 stops in three such cities in different parts of Greece.
04:07 Then, the AIS signal disappeared.
04:10 And 10 months later, the Alta reappeared near the northern coast of Africa, 1200 miles from Greece.
04:18 In September of 2018, the ship was sailing about 1400 miles southeast of Bermuda.
04:25 And at that time, the crew members started having problems.
04:29 There were 10 people on board the Alta.
04:32 On September 19th, the ship's engine failed right in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.
04:38 The nearest shore was very far away.
04:41 The ship began to drift.
04:43 As days passed, the crew couldn't fix the vessel.
04:46 Food supplies were running low.
04:49 The crew started to panic and tried to contact someone.
04:52 The situation got worse as a strong hurricane was approaching the place where the ship broke down.
04:58 Crew members contacted the U.S. Coast Guard.
05:02 On October 2nd, a helicopter headed towards the ship.
05:05 Food and water were unloaded on the Alta.
05:08 This was enough for the crew to bide their time for several days.
05:12 About a week later, a rescue boat sailed about 1500 miles to reach the Alta and help the stranded sailors.
05:20 Shortly before the start of the hurricane, American rescuers succeeded.
05:24 The entire crew of the wrecked ship was taken to Puerto Rico.
05:29 The Alta remained drifting in the ocean.
05:32 After a while, another ship arrived to tow it to the coast of Guyana.
05:36 Then, something went wrong again.
05:39 The ship was hijacked.
05:42 Who did it and why remains a mystery to this day.
05:45 But then, for some unknown reason, the thieves decided to abandon the ship and left it to drift in the ocean.
05:52 For almost a year, the ship's location couldn't be tracked.
05:56 Then, in September 2019, the vessel was found by the British Royal Navy.
06:02 How the Alta was able to cover the distance across the Atlantic and wash up on the coast of Ireland is unknown.
06:09 An investigation has been launched in Ireland.
06:12 It's necessary to identify the owner of the vessel and find a responsible person to take on the task of towing it.
06:19 But no one has since been found.
06:21 Once, an unknown person called the Irish authorities and introduced themselves as the owner of the ship, but didn't provide any evidence.
06:30 Several barrels of oil were found on board the Alta.
06:34 To dismantle the ship, the Irish authorities will need to spend about 10 million euros.
06:40 Local residents are annoyed by the wreck too.
06:43 Corroding metal is bad for the environment, and kids have already snuck on board and posted a video on the internet from inside the abandoned ship.
06:52 The further fate of the Alta remains unresolved.
06:55 It's still lying there.
06:58 That ship sailed in the ocean for just two years.
07:01 Now imagine if some other managed to drift for 38.
07:06 In all that time, no one could catch the ship, and people still seek it.
07:11 That vessel is called the SS Baychimo.
07:15 It was a merchant ship owned by a Canadian trading company.
07:19 In 1931, the ship got stuck in ice off the coast of Alaska.
07:24 A strong snowstorm began.
07:26 The team waited a week for it to end, but the storm only intensified.
07:31 One day, the weather improved a bit, and part of the team was evacuated to the nearest city.
07:37 Another part of the crew with the captain set up camp near the ship.
07:41 The storm started again and didn't stop for a long time.
07:45 The blizzard was so heavy that the ship's captain couldn't see beyond his arm's reach.
07:51 Finally, when the storm was over, the captain saw that the ship simply vanished.
07:57 He decided the Baychimo sank during the storm.
08:01 A week later, the ship was found, drifting near the place where it was lost.
08:06 The hull of the ship was damaged so badly that it was unsafe to sail on it.
08:11 The captain decided to abandon the ship.
08:14 However, it didn't sink.
08:17 For the next 38 years, it was drifting at various points along the Alaskan coast.
08:23 Several times, people climbed on the ship, including native Alaskan residents and a group of researchers.
08:29 Attempts to save the vessel from the sea ended in failure.
08:33 The salvage operations were hampered by drifting ice and bad weather.
08:38 The last time it was seen was in 1969.
08:42 The ship was frozen and blocked by the ice.
08:46 In 2006, the government created a special project to find the Baychimo.
08:51 However, in all these years, the ship still hasn't been found.
08:56 Its fate is unknown.
08:58 It's likely that the ship has finally found peace and is now lying on the seabed of the Chukchi Sea.
09:06 Hmm, can we estimate how many ships and airplanes were lost in the Bermuda Triangle?
09:13 Have their disappearances resulted from human error or weather phenomena?
09:17 Let's try to find out.
09:19 We have a curious story of the SS Cotopaxi.
09:23 This ship vanished in 1925, traveling from Charleston, South Carolina, to Havana, Cuba.
09:29 It never reached its destination.
09:32 Years later, in the 1980s, a wreck was found 40 miles off St. Augustine, Florida.
09:38 Since specialists could not precisely determine what and where it came from, they nicknamed it "Bear Wreck."
09:45 It took many additional years of work, done mainly by marine biologists,
09:50 to identify that this ship was indeed the missing SS Cotopaxi.
09:55 This was confirmed in January 2020.
09:58 How did the ship just reappear?
10:01 And how did it get there, since this mysterious shipwreck isn't even in the Bermuda Triangle?
10:07 Now, let's see who came up with this term "Bermuda Triangle."
10:11 Can you actually pinpoint the triangle on a map?
10:14 No, it's not an officially recognized location either.
10:18 The Bermuda Triangle does not appear on any world map.
10:22 Nobody has agreed on its exact boundaries.
10:25 There are only assumptions with approximations of the entire area,
10:29 ranging between 500,000 and 1.5 million square miles.
10:34 By all approximations, the region has a vaguely triangular shape.
10:39 In 1964, an American author named Vincent Hayes Gaddis
10:44 first came up with the idea when writing an article for Argosy magazine.
10:49 He used the Bermuda Triangle to describe a triangular region
10:53 that has destroyed hundreds of ships and planes without a trace.
10:58 It is pretty hard to get the number of lost ships and planes
11:01 because some ships and aircraft have gone missing without leaving a trace.
11:06 Their wreckage in the region has not been recovered.
11:09 But the recorded story should help us.
11:12 Legends about the Bermuda Triangle date back to the 15th century,
11:16 like that of the Italian explorer Christopher Columbus.
11:20 When sailing through the Atlantic waters,
11:22 he passed by this location in the late 1400s.
11:25 In what we now know as the Bermuda Triangle,
11:28 he saw a huge flame that seemed to just crash into the ocean.
11:33 Later, he saw an unusual light flashing in the distance at the exact location.
11:38 Like many other sailors since then, his compass had severe malfunctions.
11:43 Flight 19, a Navy plane on a routine schedule back in 1945,
11:48 also started the Bermuda Triangle legend.
11:51 It was commanded by Lieutenant Charles Taylor,
11:54 and it's recorded that he just got lost in the triangle for no reason.
11:58 Since pilots had no GPS back then,
12:01 they had to trust their compasses
12:03 and keep track of how long they'd been flying in a specific direction
12:07 and their speed.
12:09 Shortly after completing the task,
12:11 both of the compasses on board stopped working correctly.
12:14 Records found after the plane's disappearance
12:17 also indicate that Taylor didn't have a watch on that particular day.
12:22 The initial report stated that pilot error was to blame for this unfortunate event.
12:27 However, because people weren't satisfied with this outcome,
12:31 it was changed to "causes or reasons unknown" after several reviews.
12:37 One surviving pilot named Bruce Guerin
12:40 suggested he went through an electronic fog while passing above the triangle,
12:44 making him travel through time.
12:47 In 1970, when this incident happened,
12:50 he was flying his aircraft when it was surrounded by two huge clouds
12:54 that formed a whirlpool and spiraled.
12:57 Like many others before him,
12:59 he noticed that his navigation devices were malfunctioning.
13:02 When he eventually made it out of those clouds,
13:05 he discovered that his flight had only taken 35 minutes.
13:09 It should've taken 75 in total.
13:12 Since he had no other reasonable explanation for what he went through,
13:16 he believed he must've been pushed forward in time.
13:20 It's not only strange-looking clouds that have been seen above the Bermuda Triangle.
13:25 In 2014, a pilot recalled almost colliding with a flying object
13:30 that he could not identify whatsoever.
13:33 Some of these strange encounters were even caught on tape.
13:36 It's the case of an early 2015 flight
13:39 whose passengers noticed a curious object just floating over the ocean.
13:44 The pilots have yet to figure out what they actually saw back there.
13:48 Okay, not all of the possible explanations have been this unusual.
13:53 Oceanographers, for example, have also tried to explain why ships disappear around here.
13:59 So, they recently came back to one of their old theories – rogue waves.
14:04 These are immense walls of water that just pop up suddenly.
14:08 If multiple such waves rise simultaneously, they overlap like a wave sandwich.
14:14 If one single wave can reach over 30 feet tall and happen simultaneously,
14:19 it can create a rogue wave that can surpass 100 feet high.
14:24 These types of waves can quickly overtake even the biggest of ships.
14:28 Meteorologists came up with their own explanation too – hexagonal clouds.
14:33 These unusual types of clouds can generate winds of up to 170 mph.
14:39 And they're pretty significant too, some reaching 20 to 55 miles across.
14:45 As such, waves inside these wind giants can go as high as 45 feet.
14:51 The Earth's own magnetic force might also have something to do with it.
14:56 Within the Bermuda Triangle, compasses point to True North, the geographic North Pole,
15:01 rather than Magnetic North, the shifting magnetic North Pole.
15:06 Some have even explained that since these two perfectly overlap in the Bermuda Triangle,
15:11 it can cause a magnetic phenomenon that could make navigational devices malfunction.
15:17 It's called the agonic line.
15:19 The problem is that scientists have discovered that this line moves each year.
15:24 It might have passed through the Bermuda Triangle at one point, but it's now through the Gulf of Mexico.
15:30 Other strange natural phenomenon found along the coast of Norway
15:34 could help explain why the Bermuda Triangle has claimed so many ships.
15:39 There are some deep craters there, measuring up to half a mile wide and are 150 feet deep.
15:46 Scientists believe they were created by methane gas bubbles.
15:49 This gas seems to be leaking from deposits hidden deep in the seabed.
15:54 Once the gas reaches a certain quantity, it bursts to the surface and causes eruptions.
16:00 So, do pilots and ship captains actually avoid this area today?
16:06 Could this explain why there are fewer ships that get lost there nowadays?
16:10 But if you've ever flown from Miami to San Juan, Puerto Rico, you probably know that's not true.
16:17 As for ships, if people would avoid the Bermuda Triangle, nearly all Caribbean vacations would be spoiled.
16:24 To this day, there are a lot of flights that go over the Bermuda Triangle, so it's clear nobody is avoiding it.
16:31 This place is one of the most heavily traveled shipping lanes in the world.
16:35 Nowadays, the Bermuda Triangle has heavy daily traffic, both by sea and air.
16:41 But the Bermuda Triangle is indeed subject to tropical storms and hurricanes that happen very often.
16:48 Let's also keep in mind that the Gulf Stream, a strong ocean current that causes sharp changes in local weather, passes through the Bermuda Triangle.
16:57 Besides, the deepest point in the Atlantic Ocean, the Milwaukee Depth, is also located in the Bermuda Triangle.
17:04 The Puerto Rico Trench reaches almost 27,500 feet at the Milwaukee Depth.
17:11 So, if you think about it, the whole mystery is a perfect combination of human error, bad weather, and a lot of ship traffic.
17:19 This was confirmed by data provided by the U.S. Coast Guard.
17:23 If you look at percentages, the number of ships or planes that go missing in the Bermuda Triangle isn't different from anywhere else.
17:31 Disappearances do not happen more often than in any comparable region of the Atlantic Ocean.
17:37 Official statistics say around 50 ships and 20 airplanes have vanished while traveling through this region.
17:44 So, that's another reason why the total number is so hard to pinpoint.
17:49 Nobody could describe its rescue in official records if a boat was reported missing.
17:55 There were also some events that, it turns out, didn't happen at all, adding to those false reports.
18:02 Like that of a plane crash back in 1937 off Daytona Beach, Florida, that local papers surprisingly revealed nothing about.
18:11 That's it for today! So, hey, if you pacified your curiosity, then give the video a like and share it with your friends.
18:17 Or, if you want more, just click on these videos and stay on the Bright Side!

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