Havana|
The Cuban Coast Guard announced this morning, that they had intercepted an
unmanned ship heading for the island, which is presumed to be the SS Cotopaxi,
a tramp steamer which vanished in December 1925 and has since been connected to
the legend of the Bermuda Triangle.
The Cuban authorities spotted the ship for the first time on
May 16, near a restricted military zone, west of Havana. They made many
unsuccessful attempts to communicate with the crew, and finally mobilized three
patrol boats to intercept it.
When they reached it, they were surprised to find that the
ship was actually a nearly 100-year old steamer identified as the Cotopaxi, a
name famously associated with the legend of the Bermuda Triangle. There was no
one on board and the ship seemed to have been abandoned for decades, suggesting
that this could actually be the tramp freighter that disappeared in 1925.
An exhaustive search of the ship led to the discovery of the
captain’s logbook. It was, indeed, associated with the Clinchfield Navigation
Company, the owners of the SS Cotopaxi, but hasn’t brought any clue concerning
what happened to the ship over the last 90 years.
Cuban expert, Rodolfo Salvador Cruz, believes that the
captain’s logbook is authentic. This document is full of precious information
concerning the life of the crew before the ship’s disappearance, but the
entries stop suddenly on December 1, 1925.
On 29 November 1925, the SS Cotopaxi departed Charleston,
South Carolina, and headed towards Havana, Cuba. The ship had a crew of 32 men,
under the command of Captain W. J. Meyer, and was carrying a cargo of 2340 tons
of coal. It was reported missing two days later, and was unheard of for almost
90 years.
The Vice President of Council of Ministers, General Abelardo
Colomé, announced that the Cuban authorities were going to conduct a thorough
investigation to elucidate the mystery of the ship’s disappearance and
reappearance.
“It is very important for us to understand what
happened” says General Colomé. “Such
incidents could be really bad for our economy, so want to make sure that this kind of
disappearance doesn’t happen again. The time has come to solve the mystery of
the Bermuda Triangle, once and for all.”
The Bermuda Triangle is a loosely defined region covering
the area between Miami, Puerto Rico and Bermuda, where dozens of ships and
planes have disappeared under mysterious circumstances.
Popular culture has attributed many of the disappearances to
paranormal and supernatural phenomena, or to the activity of extraterrestrial
beings. One explanation, even pins the
blame on leftover technology from the mythical lost continent of Atlantis.
Despite the popularity of all these strange theories, most
scientists don’t even recognize the existence of the Bermuda Triangle, and
blame human mistakes and natural phenomena for the disappearances.
The mysterious reappearance of the SS Cotopaxi has, however,
already generated a lot of interest in the scientific community and could push
some experts to change their mind on the subject.