USS Niña: Niña, a 4th rate iron screw steamer, was laid down by Reaney, Son, and Archbold, Chester, Pa., in 1864; launched 27 May 1865; delivered at New York Navy Yard 26 September 1865; and placed in service as a yard tug at the Washington Navy Yard 6 January 1866, Ensign F. C., Hall commanding that ship and sister tugs Primrose and Rescue. Niña operated as a yard tug for the Washington Naval Gun Factory through May 1869 and was then converted to a torpedo boat. She commissioned 31 March 1870, LT. Godfrey Hunter in command, and then sailed for Newport R.I., arriving at the Naval Station 14 April. The ship served as a torpedo boat at Newport through 1883, refitting in May 1884 for special service, and next operated from August to October salvaging the wreck of sidewheel gunboat Tallapoosa sunk in Martha's Vineyard Sound. From 1885 to 1889 Niña served in various capacities at New York navy Yard, and then returned to Newport from 1890 to 1891.

The converted tugboat returned to New York Navy Yard in 1892 to resume her original duties, continuing her yard work and towing services there for a decade. On 8 October 1902, she commissioned as tender and supply vessel to the Torpedo Boat Flotilla during winter maneuvers in the Caribbean. The ship returned to New York 15 March 1903 and decommissioned 6 days later, once again taking up her yard towing chores. Niña was next loaned to the Lighthouse Department to verify aids to navigation near Puerto Rican waters to protect the Fleet conducting Winter maneuvers from October 1903 to April 1904. She recommissioned 9 September 1905 for special service with the Board of Inspection and Survey, Rockland, Me. Niña was ordered converted into a submarine tender on 28 December 1905. On 25 May 1906, she arrived at the Newport Naval Torpedo Station, and following a year's service, was assigned as tender for the 1st Torpedo Flotilla. For the next four years, she served with the Atlantic Fleet's infant submarine force in its pioneer coastal operations form Newport to Annapolis and Norfolk...

In 1975 a librarian by the name of Larry Kusche published a book entitled The Bermuda Triangle Mystery-Solved. In the book Kusche revealed that many of the strange accidents and disappearances reported in the Bermuda Triangle were not so "paranormal" after all. In many accounts, he discovered that when a writer had noted that a ship went down in calm waters, a raging storm had caused the ship to sink, or when other ships were reported to have mysteriously vanished, their remains had been found and the cause of the disaster explained. Of course, Kusche's theories have been debated and although others have claimed to solve the mysterious accidents and disappearances in the Bermuda Triangle, it can still to this day comfortably fit into the realm of unsolved mysteries.

The Bermuda Triangle or "devil's triangle" is an imaginary triangle stretching from Norfolk to the island of Bermuda and back to Puerto Rico . The term "Bermuda Triangle" was first used in an article written for Argosy magazine in 1964. The author claimed that in this strange expanse of sea a number of planes and ships had disappeared without explanation. Although it was the first time the term was used, the mystery of the triangle was already known. Actually, as early as 1492, Christopher Columbus reported that while he sailed through the area, his compass went haywire and he spotted a ball of fire in the sky. This could easily be explained away as a meteor and the trouble with his compass as a discrepancy between true north and magnetic north that exists in the triangle. Another famous encounter is the discovery of the abandoned ship Mary Celeste in 1892. There was no sign of the captain, his family, and the eight crew members or what happened to them. Save for one lifeboat, all the supplies had been left on the ship. It appeared that they had abandoned ship quickly, but why? And the most famous of all strange occurences in the triangle: the disappearance of the five navy avenger bombers of Flight 19, is to this day blamed on the deadly triangle...

The Bermuda Triangle (a.k.a. the Devil's Triangle) is a triangular area in the Atlantic Ocean bounded roughly at its points by Miami, Bermuda, and Puerto Rico. Legend has it that many people, ships and planes have mysteriously vanished in this area. How many have mysteriously disappeared depends on who is doing the locating and the counting. The size of the triangle varies from 500,000 square miles to three times that size, depending on the imagination of the author. (Some include the Azores, the Gulf of Mexico, and the West Indies in the "triangle.") Some trace the mystery back to the time of Columbus. Even so, estimates range from about 200 to no more than 1,000 incidents in the past 500 years. Howard Rosenberg claims that in 1973 the U.S. Coast Guard answered more than 8,000 distress calls in the area and that more than 50 ships and 20 planes have gone down in the Bermuda Triangle within the last century.

Many theories have been given to explain the extraordinary mystery of these missing ships and planes. Evil extraterrestrials, residue crystals from Atlantis, evil humans with anti-gravity devices or other weird technologies, and vile vortices from the fourth dimension are favorites among fantasy writers. Strange magnetic fields and oceanic flatulence (methane gas from the bottom of the ocean) are favorites among the technically-minded. Weather (thunderstorms, hurricanes, tsunamis, earthquakes, high waves, currents, etc.) bad luck, pirates, explosive cargoes, incompetent navigators, and other natural and human causes are favorites among skeptical investigators. There are some skeptics who argue that the facts do not support the legend, that there is no mystery to be solved, and nothing that needs explaining.The number of wrecks in this area is not extraordinary, given its size, location and the amount of traffic it receives. Many of the ships and planes that have been identified as having disappeared mysteriously in the Bermuda Triangle were not in the Bermuda Triangle at all...