10. The loss of HMS Atalanta in 1880 was ascribed to the triangle in the 1960s
A superstition among sailors of the past was that renaming a ship rendered it unlucky. Atalanta was renamed twice. Originally a small frigate of the Royal Navy named Juno, the ship was converted into a training ship in 1878, renamed Mariner. Two weeks later it was renamed Atalanta. In 1880 the ship departed the Royal Naval Dockyard in Bermuda, bound for Falmouth, Great Britain. The ship never arrived, and it was determined it was lost due to a storm. But nothing so mundane as a storm was acceptable to writers pushing the existence of the Bermuda Triangle. To them Atalanta was an example of a ship sailing into a mysterious unknown, its fate undetermined, its destiny forever a question mark. As with many of the stories of the triangle, the writers simply ignored facts, invented alternatives, and created fictional a fictional account.
In the case of Atalanta, the ship sailed through waters where a severe storm had passed. By calculating known factors, such as the ship’s speed, prevailing winds, and the storm’s path, the Admiralty determined where and when the two likely met. HMS Avon reported wreckage near the Azores, and a German freighter reported a submerged wreck near the path which Atalanta would likely have followed. And another factor to consider is that Atalanta was nowhere near the Bermuda Triangle, at least using the boundaries established by Gaddis. Instead, it was several hundred miles north and east of the so-called “Devil’s Triangle”, as some of the more convinced of the supernatural influence came to call the region. It stands to reason for a ship to be the victim of the Bermuda Triangle it should actually be in the Bermuda Triangle when its fate catches up with it.