Secrets of the Bermuda Triangle Wreck - Shipwreck Secrets - S01 EP03 - Documentary

Close to the infamous Bermuda Triangle lie the remains of a mystery vessel that has been baffling maritime experts for almost two decades. What we don't know, the name of the vessel, what happened to the crew. One thing we know for certain, there is a freighter at the bottom. This makes this another great mystery of the sea. Is the ship yet another victim of the strange phenomena that surround the Bermuda Triangle legend? And why is the wreck completely uncharted? There's nothing reported to have been lost in this area. There shouldn't be a wreck there, but yet there is. Now a team of maritime experts armed with the latest underwater technology is on a mission to identify the wreck and solve the mystery of its sinking. The seas and oceans of the world are filled with mysteries, lost ships, and lost lives. Now with cutting edge technology, new clues are being uncovered, unraveling these incredible stories and revealing their sunken secrets. Along the coastline of Florida, more than 5,000 known shipwrecks litter the ocean bed. Florida is a giant hazard to navigation between the Gulf of Mexico, the Caribbean, and the Atlantic Ocean. In over four centuries of historic shipping around Florida, hundreds of vessels have wrecked on our reefs, in our dangerous inlets, and on our beaches. These shipwrecks are time capsules preserved in the sand below the seas. But for one of these wrecks, there is no record. It simply should not exist. It's a large vessel. It should be really easy to identify, but yet over 20 years, it's thwarted all my attempts. And it's really starting to just be a thorn in my side. Michael Barnett is an underwater explorer who for 30 years has been discovering, diving, and identifying shipwrecks all around the world. As a kid, I've always been fascinated with the ocean. That's what led me to become a marine biologist. But as an aside, I'm also a very big history buff. So obviously, there's just that natural gravitation towards shipwrecks. One anonymous wreck in particular fascinates Michael. Today, the technology to help him identify it has advanced and become more accessible. The time to solve this mystery is now. One theory at the top of the list is that the wreck is one of many missing ships that traveled through the Bermuda Triangle. The Bermuda Triangle is really kind of a legendary phenomenon. And that area changes depending on who you talk to. It encompasses a large swath of the ocean. If a ship encounters a storm that's so powerful, it's not that uncommon an idea that a ship would found her at sea. The wreck is located 25 miles off the coast of Sebastian, Florida, and lies 300 feet deep in water at the edge of the Gulf Stream. The Gulf Stream has been the greatest highway in human history. It provides a natural source of energy to sail from the new world back to the old world. The Gulf Stream is a warm ocean current that originates in the Gulf of Mexico and flows through the Straits of Florida into the North Atlantic. It's about 60 miles wide, maybe 4,000 feet deep. So it's a massive movement of water. Could this movement have carried a wreck that passed through the Bermuda Triangle to its current resting place? It's something you put your ship in if you're sailing from the south to the north. And it gives you an extra push. You save fuel. You save time. But while the area continues to be a crucial part of ocean travel today, it comes with dangers. The warm water intensifies hurricanes and tropical storms, creating a raft of potentially lethal conditions. Could treacherous weather have played a part in this ship's sinking? The tricky climate is the reason Michael has only been able to dive the wreck on a handful of occasions during the last 20 years. We were struck because it's sitting bolt up right on the bottom, almost like a ghost ship. This looks like it's just steaming along the bottom. Very skeletal, though. There's areas where the hull plates have dropped away. Looks similar to what someone would imagine in a Hollywood movie. There are no visible markings left on the wreck that would identify it. But what Michael has established from previous dives is that it appears to be a steel freighter from the 20th century, measuring roughly 270 to 300 feet in length. And on one expedition, he was able to recover evidence that may shed some light. So the wreck has fallen apart over the years since we've been visiting her. But we have seen quite a few clues. Found this one shard of china that was manufactured by the Shenango China Company in Newcastle, Pennsylvania, which indicates potentially this vessel was American in origin. Shenango China operated for over 90 years from 1901. But Michael has determined that the maker's mark on the back of the plate dates its year of manufacture to 1912. He also found another interesting artifact that may help identify the date of its sinking. There's a large deck gun right on the stern of the vessel. Deck guns were installed on merchant ships during the 20th century in times of war. Michael has sent the footage of the deck gun to Bill Kismick, the director of the American Victory Museum, in the hope that he can date the gun more accurately. A lot of Marine growth on there makes it difficult to specifically identify this. But with the deck gun, with some of the deck equipment we're looking at, the hatches, it clearly looks like it could belong to some of the classes that supported World War II. From 1941, Liberty ships were used by the US Merchant Marine and its civilian crewmen to transport cargo for the war effort. It's truly the lifeline for the British forces and the Allied forces overseas in delivering those critical supplies that were needed by the troops. The Merchant Marines were some of the war's unsung heroes. Often, not knowing where they were going or what they were hauling were not the only uncertainties facing them at sea. Because prowling the oceans was a sinister and deadly threat, the German U-boat. U-boats stalked and hunted their prey in the Atlantic Ocean. Their aim was to sink ships carrying vital Allied war cargo. Could the mystery wreck have been a U-boat victim? The way the anchor is placed and the way the bow of the ship, kind of its cut looks of that era. But a smaller, maybe a coastal freighter is what I feel like we're looking at here. It seems that the mystery wreck was built to travel only along the US shoreline. For Michael, the mystery deepens. Was the wreck another unexplained victim of the Bermuda Triangle phenomena? Could it have been sunk by German U-boats? And if so, how was that possible if the ship never ventured out into the Atlantic? A new quest to identify a mystery vessel sunk off the Bermuda Triangle is raising fascinating questions. Was it another Triangle victim? Or did it fall prey to German U-boats? And if a U-boat sunk her, how had it come so close to the US shoreline? The answer may lie in a little known but dramatic story from World War II. After the US joined the war in 1941, Germany's U-boat commander Karl Dönitz devised a daring plan to attack this new enemy. What he intended, of course, was not just a surprise attack. He started a continued effort of the American East Coast in order to exploit that situation as long as he could. In December 1941, five U-boats left the German naval base at Lorient, Northwestern France. Their destination, the East Coast of America. On the American East Coast, merchant traffic was like in peacetime. There was no protection, neither from the air or from the sea. For the Germans, it was an attractive target. The Germans gave the plan a code name, Operation Drumbeat. The mission was not only to attack shipping before it left port, where defense measures were weak and disorganized, but more importantly, to sink the coastal vessels that were keeping America's industry alive. Combat was not this abstract thing that happened across the ocean. It's happening right off the beach. They can see it, they can hear it, they can smell it. The attacks continued down the American East Coast towards the state of Florida. This was a battleground. These tranquil waters were filled with German submarines on the hunt, freighters and tankers trying to escape a fiery end. By the end of the Second World War, a total of 24 merchant vessels had been sunk by U-boats off the coast of Florida. But none of them matched the description of Michael's mystery wreck. No information indicating any vessel should have been sunk within 20, 30 miles of this location. To identify this shipwreck, we really need a smoking gun, an object that has the name of the vessel on it, a serial number or patent number that can be traced. And that will basically lead us down the trail of where this vessel came from and how it was lost. In doing so, I think we're actually going to potentially change history, because this vessel does not belong here. So Michael prepares to return to the wreck once more. He's joined by his trusted diving partner, Joe Citelli. And this time, he's also enlisted Quincy Andrews, who brings with him state-of-the-art technology. The fact that the wreck lies 300 feet down in the cold, dark depths of the sea limits time at the bottom. This is where Baxter, the remotely operated vehicle, comes in. It will map the area, producing a pre-dive survey that should allow the divers to target certain areas and make maximum use of their time underwater. But before they've even started, Michael spots a problem that could derail the whole operation. A potentially violent storm has started to form on the horizon. And it appears to be headed straight for them. In the region of the Bermuda Triangle, off the coast of Florida, a dive team is going underwater to try and identify the remains of a wreck that has baffled experts. But there's a problem on the horizon in the shape of a potentially disastrous storm. With the storm closing in, Michael and the team have to move quickly if they're to stand any chance of making a successful dive. Quincy, looks like the captain's marked the wreck. We got about 3 and 1 half knots of current. Also, it looks like the storm's going to be blowing up on us. And we don't really have a lot of time to spare now, so I guess we should get the RV in the water. Standby. 870 feet. Throwing the RV. Down, down, down. Things do not go to plan. Baxter is unable to penetrate the strong surface current. It's the first time it's been used here. And in the Gulf Stream, the surface current can reach 6 miles per hour, making it difficult for Quincy to control the ROV. With the storm looking like it's getting closer, the team have a decision to make. Michael has little option. He has to call off the dive. Yeah, just keep the engines off. We're going to recover. A combination of the sudden arrival of the storm and the particularly strong underwater currents means the dive must wait for another day. Michael and the team will need to head back to land and wait for the right conditions. This area of Florida, especially the deep wrecks in particular, they're very dynamic. You never know until you're actually on site how much current you're going to have on the surface. And you won't know until you actually dive it what the current's like on the bottom. 200 feet of visibility in the Gulf Stream on the surface. And you drop through the thermocline, and you can have one to two feet of visibility. It's just like swimming in a Guinness, which obviously makes things interesting trying to navigate a shipwreck. But this delay gives Michael an opportunity to think a little more about the U-boat theory. Now I'm trying to think outside the box. Now I'm looking at these other vessels sunk north of Yucatan, sunk north of Cuba. Those kind of vessels I need to pay closer attention to. It's possible the vessel could have floated north with the Gulf Stream and eventually come to rest off Sebastian Inlet a day later. Could it be that this ship's sinking is unrecorded because of the embarrassment surrounding Operation Drumbeat? Not for Germany, but for America. This is still inexplicable, is that American coastal cities were very slow to initiate blackouts. They wouldn't turn their lights off. They didn't want to scare the tourists. So German submarines could see these ships silhouetted against the shore, making them perfect targets. Determined to avoid a panic, the American authorities issued no warning to the public, which was completely unaware that a battle was taking place right on their doorstep. There's a really fantastic documentation of an attack of a tanker off Jacksonville, Florida, where they could see a fair going on, see a Ferris wheel, see people on the beach. So again, we did not think the U-boats could touch us. Having exhausted all known records on land, it's clear to Michael that he will need to locate some hard physical evidence. There's a break in the weather. Knowing conditions may not be on their side for long, Michael and his team quickly seize the opportunity to finally dive the wreck. So it looks like we definitely have over three knots, maybe three and a half knots. So current is definitely smoking. We're definitely on the edge of the Gulf Stream. The rapid currents of the Gulf Stream make it impossible for them to drop anchor. So diving straight down on top of the wreck is not an option. Instead, they will have to perform a negative entry dive, otherwise known as a hot drop. It's really akin to skydiving, because you're basically launching away from the wreck and trying to use the current to guide your way into it, like wind would guide you into your landing spot. It's all in the skill of the captain. Yeah. The plan is to enter the water south of the wreck. And instead of fighting against the current, they will use it to drift to the target as they descend. Their timing will need to be perfect, or they'll risk missing the wreck. All right, I guess we need to start suiting up. All right. Let's go do it. Working with the currents, they begin their descent. As the visibility drops, spotting the wreck becomes very difficult. But at 300 feet, they spot their target. Scanning the wreckage, they find what looks like a possible reason for its sinking, a break in the hull. But what could have caused it? With precious little time available, they continue their search. Within moments, Michael frantically signals to Joe. Has he found something which will at last reveal the identity of the mystery wreck? 25 miles out to sea, a specialist dive team are exploring the remains of a mystery wreck believed to have passed through the Bermuda Triangle. And it looks like they've found something. Topside, the signal buoy breaks the surface. Support diver Ken quickly enters the water to investigate. It's a lift bag containing evidence from the wreck. Back at the bottom, Michael and Joe scramble to retrieve a serial number from the deck gun. But time and air are running out. They have to abandon and begin to resurface. On deck, the rest of the team are eager to find out what they have discovered. First to come back up is Joe. But something has gone wrong. Last, we hit black water. And we were probably five feet apart, couldn't see. Sudden loss of visibility can occur during dives when the currents pick up. That's how Joe lost contact with Michael, who hasn't resurfaced. When you leave the bottom and you shoot the lift 50 feet, you just completely couldn't see him. He couldn't see me. It's proof of the dangerous threat posed by the strong current. All the team on deck can do now is wait. But time is running out. Guys, if you notice, we have a storm coming in. And there's been lightning flashes over there. So as soon as he comes in, we should be heading back in so we can avoid it. We'll try to go around it. If the storm hits while Michael is still below, it could be disastrous. Choppy water and lightning strikes all pose very real, dangerous threats. The team at the top anxiously look out for Michael. After tense moments of waiting, he finally resurfaces. Yeah, on the starboard side, you can see where it broke down. And it also seemed like there's a big breach, a massive gaping hole inside of the hull, which, I mean, I don't know. That could look like it could be a torpedo. Michael has found what he thinks could be evidence of a U-boat attack. But perhaps an even more vital clue is what was sent up in the lift bag. It was found in the cargo hold. And Michael believes it could prove invaluable in identifying the wreck. The clue has a distinctive smell and color. It looks white on the bottom. It's yellow. Yellow, yeah. I mean, that looks like sulfur to me, doesn't it? It looks like two-tone. Oh, yeah. Yeah, solid chunk. In the early and mid-20th century, sulfur production was big business around the Gulf Coast, an important commodity which was transported from Texas all the way up the East Coast. If what they've found is sulfur, it'll narrow down the list of possible ships the wreck could be. It soon becomes clear that the team completed the dive just in time. Axel Niestl is an expert in World War II era German U-boats. Michael has sent him footage of the breach in the Bermuda Triangle mystery Rex Hull. Could she have been a victim of Operation Drumbeat? What we see here is a ship hull being broken apart with clear-cut breaks in the outer hull. There's no indication for a torpedo explosion. And that leaves us to the conclusion that it is probably not a victim from a German U-boat. But if the ship wasn't sunk in a U-boat attack, why did it go down? And why is there no record of it? All hopes of identifying the mysterious Bermuda Triangle shipwreck now lie on one last piece of evidence. A dive team is trying to identify a mysterious wreck that may have passed through the infamous Bermuda Triangle. The theory that it was sunk by a German U-boat now seems highly unlikely. But a hazardous dive succeeded in producing a final piece of evidence. Michael Barnett has delivered the cargo samples from the wreck to the Lighthouse Archaeological Maritime Program in Florida. Here, maritime archaeologists Chuck Mead and Brendan Burke are about to carry out tests on the material that on first inspection they believed may be sulfur. What we will learn from burning this, which is what we're going to do, will hopefully tell us a lot about the wreck. It's a priceless opportunity to narrow down the search. So if it is sulfur, when you burn sulfur, what do we expect to see? We're looking for three telltale things. We're looking for color of the flame. That should be blue, about the color of this. Second, we should see kind of a reddish hue of melting. Probably start bubbling almost instantaneously with a very kind of maroon reddish color. And it should also catch on fire. Safety goggles on. Safety first. Sulfur is known for its volatile nature. It's easily combustible. So it should smolder, burn, and ignite when it comes into contact with a flame. Look at that red flash. Turn the light off in here and see if we can see a blue flame. Oh, yeah. Look at that. It's almost purely invisible. But it's burning, and you can really start to smell the sulfur dioxide now. It's providing its own fuel to the fire. It's just melting more like a candle. With the cargo now confirmed as sulfur, Michael has new search criteria. Looking for vessels that disappeared while carrying a cargo of sulfur, he is almost immediately able to narrow the search down to just a handful of ships. Suddenly, Michael notices something. Came across this one vessel called the Hewitt. It was carrying sulfur as well, and it had a deck gun for World War I for protection against U-boats in the First World War. She looks about the right length. Looking at all the dimensions and the characteristics of this vessel, it kind of has that vibe of our mystery wreck. In 1921, the SS Hewitt was carrying a cargo of sulfur from Port Arthur, Texas, to Portland in Maine. But it never arrived at its final destination, and it vanished without a trace. Its planned route would have taken it through the Gulf Stream and the area of the Bermuda Triangle. It seems as if Michael has identified his wreck, but something's still not right. Kept digging at this and realized that it was actually probably lost much further north than our mystery wreck. There was a radio report off Jacksonville, so it already passed through our area of interest. Determined to solve his mystery, Michael retrieves the records once more and stumbles across another ship, which also left from Texas and was also carrying a cargo of sulfur, the MV Sonora. So I tracked down the Sonora. I look at the archival images here, and I'm seeing features, especially right in the anchor placement is what we see on the wreck. I'm seeing there's a scupper, a small hole just above the anchor hoss pipe where they give 10 lines and things like that. And it matches up exactly in our archival photo of our vessel, the Sonora, earlier in her career in the wreck. I mean, you see that feature. It is almost like a fingerprint that's almost identical. With its cargo of sulfur, the Sonora was en route from Texas to Boston in 1945. It was last seen burning in flames off the east coast of Florida, and its wreck was lost. So I have these clues in these articles saying it caught fire anywhere between 17 and 20 miles offshore of Hobe Sound to Fort Pierce, so we have that as a starting point. I need to look at the map here to see where that falls proximity to our mystery wreck. And it looks like it's at a maximum distance. We're only about 45 miles or so south of our mystery wreck. A key thing that is overlooked here in these articles is that we have in this area, we have the Gulf Stream, which is a very powerful current that flows northward. This could carry it exactly to where our mystery wreck is. The Sonora was in operation during World War II, and it was also fitted with a deck gun. Could this be the Bermuda Triangle mystery ship Michael has been looking for? A dive team headed by underwater explorer Michael Barnett is searching for a Bermuda Triangle mystery wreck. The search has led them to a ship called the MV Sonora, which disappeared in World War II while carrying a cargo of sulfur. But there is a discrepancy. Michael's wreck was an engine-powered ship, but newspaper clippings of the time show the Sonora to be a completely different type of vessel, a sail-powered schooner. Schooner laden with sulfur burns, sinks. Burning schooner, sinks. When you think schooner, you think of sailing vessel. Confusing. Despite the fact that the Sonora was reported to be a schooner, Michael is convinced that he has found his ship. In order to confirm his hunch, he has tracked down a copy of the Sonora's building plans and has come to meet with Chuck and Brendan at LAMP. They begin by viewing the footage captured by the team on their dive. Michael is hoping that the layout of the wreck will match with the plans of the Sonora. Pause that for a minute. That's here, right there. And then where the crack is, I think we've got right in there. Right there. All right, so that's the first portal. That's here. So that's where our crack is. You can actually see the holes, the bolt holes. You can, yeah, exactly. Here is the after cargo hold, that bulkhead right here. Some machinery spaces back in here, right on the wreck, which happens to be right at the bulkhead. Everything they are seeing on the wreck seems to match. We also see that there was a strake sticking out up here. And that's strake S, right below. So we see that right over here, strake S right there. We have treble layers of rivet for butt joints. But at the S strake, we have four layers of rivets. So that's something that's unique to this wreck. And that's exactly what we saw on there. But the fact remains that Michael's shipwreck was an engine-powered vessel and not a sail-powered schooner. So the term schooner is really a red herring. And it's that time in American shipping where it's some of the last application of schooner. When you take these lines as drawn and you look at what the Sonora ended up being, they're almost unrecognizable. The Sonora had originally been built in 1916 as a four-mast schooner. But she was also fitted with an engine. Later modifications turned her into a three-mast cargo ship, exactly matching the configuration of Michael's Bermuda Triangle mystery wreck. Is this enough for Michael to have conclusively proved that his wreck is the Sonora? Is a cargo of sulfur highly flammable that's just waiting to catch fire? On June 22, 1945, the Sonora sent a message reporting a fire in the engine room. And at some point, the heat from the engine room fire causes that bulkhead to possibly fail. And the sulfur now catches on fire. But is there any evidence on the wreck that shows that there was a fire before it sunk? The sulfur retrieved by the team came from the forward and center cargo holds. The rear cargo hold, where the fire would have started, was empty. For a number of hours, she was ablaze. Right. You know, the crew's getting off. So we've got this hold is full of sulfur. This hold is full of sulfur. We do not see sulfur here. And fire was supposed to have been started by an engine room fire. So I wonder if this hold was full of sulfur, and that has burned. That is more than sufficient heat to breach the hull. Because you've got heat on the inside and cold seawater on the outside. And all of a sudden, she just splits open. Molten sulfur pours out. Seawater pours in. And the vessel sinks. Goes down. Yeah. So that's direct evidence of fire right there. Uncontaminated, undamaged. Damaged because of the heat that was back here. And then mostly gone. Yeah. So here we have the ocean, Florida on the west side. And the approximate location of the Gulf Stream is right there, where we got a plane that spots Sonora on fire June 22. 16 hours later, drifting northwards at about three knots, being pushed by the Gulf Stream. And we can see that on this nautical chart right here. Yeah, where those black arrows are, that's the force shoving her to the north. Then at 925 on June 23, Sonora cracks wide open, full of flames, fills with seawater, and sinks to the bottom. Based on time, distance, and speed, it puts it right where the mystery wreck is. It certainly does. Mike, I think there's no question. The construction features we've seen, the things we see on the seafloor, the sequence of the fire, and how we can tell the different compartments, how the sulfur is burning in different stages, the location of the wreck, this is it. I think you've solved the mystery. I mean, this is the Sonora it's got to be. So congratulations. That's fantastic news. I mean, we've been working at this for 19 years. I mean, it's nice to finally wrap this one up. Another mystery solved. Michael fills out the official shipwreck identification form, a very satisfying conclusion to nearly two decades of research and investigation. In the end, it was not German U-boats, treacherous weather, or the legend of the Bermuda Triangle that sent the ship to the bottom of the sea. The Sonora sank because an uncontrollable fire tore through her. Miraculously, there was no loss of life. In my career, I've been fortunate enough to dive quite a few historical shipwrecks, and many of them with a lot of loss of life. In this instance, though, the wreck of the Sonora, all we have is the grave of a ship. Everyone was rescued. There's no loss of life, which is quite unique in most shipwreck tales. The ship still went down, but everyone was rescued and lived to get home to their loved ones. There's always a nice sense of gravitation when you're able to identify a shipwreck and finally tell the tale, that last chapter of the story.