Page 60 - The 'X' Chronicles Newspaper - February 2023 Edition
P. 60
60 Lake Ontario’s Bermuda Triangle
‘Strange things out there’:
Inside Lake Ontario’s
‘Bermuda Triangle’
When experienced amateur pilot Ron
Scott set out from Picton Airport in a
Cessna 172 in the summer of 1975, there
was no reason to suspect trouble.
LAKE ONTARIO
The sky was clear. The wind was calm. It
was perfect weather for a short pleasure
flight over the shores of Prince Edward
County. But as his plane made its way
over Prince Edward Point, the peninsula
at the county’s southeastern tip,
something “unnerving” began to happen.
Without any sign of turbulence, the plane
banked sharply to one side and locked LAKE ERIE
itself in that position.
“It was as if an invisible giant took hold region that few sightseers ever learn assistance. But there was no one there to
of the wing,” says Scott. “I could not about. assist. The Bavaria appeared to still be in
straighten it out.” working condition, but the entire crew,
Dubbed the Marysburgh Vortex, or including Capt. John Marshall, was
Without the ability to counter, Scott alternatively “The Graveyard of Lake missing.
feared his plane would flip over entirely Ontario,” the small stretch of water off
and fall into a spin, which at 1,000 feet the shores of Prince Edward County has Even more mysterious was when the ship
would have been tough to pull out of. His for centuries played host to shipwrecks, ran aground at a nearby island, it was
plane began to right itself after about 10 airplane mishaps, strange sightings and found to be entirely undamaged, save for
seconds. Then the same thing happened mysterious disappearances. a missing lifeboat.
with the other wing. Somehow, despite
all the midair chaos, Scott was able to Researchers have identified at least 270, “Everything in the cabin is dry. Even a
make it down safely, though he was and as many as 500, ships that met their pan of bread, set in the oven to bake, is
understandably rattled. watery end in this part of the lake. And at still there,” wrote Kingston’s the Daily
least 40 planes have met a similar grisly British Whig.
“It shakes you up a bit. Like ‘what just fate in and around these shores — a far
happened?’” Scott, 46 years later, still higher concentration of shipwrecks and The Oswego Daily Palladium noted that
wonders. plane crashes than can be found in the Capt. Marshall was “a good man, and one
famous Bermuda Triangle in the North not likely to act rashly or without
He has flown in just about every kind of Atlantic Ocean. thought.”
weather imaginable, but he has no
explanation for what occurred that day. The Bavaria ghost ship What possessed a captain and his crew to
jump ship in the middle of a terrible
“It was just totally weird,” says Scott. On May 28, 1889, the schooner Bavaria storm? Since Bavaria was carrying
“I’ve experienced nothing like that ever entered the final stretch of its journey timber, it was never at risk of sinking. If
before or since. And I’ve never heard of hauling timber from Toledo, Ohio, to the crew had simply stayed on board,
anything like that … There are strange Garden Island, near Kingston, Ont. investigators concluded, everyone would
things out there.” have been safe.
The vessel was part of a trio of ships
His story is hardly an isolated tale. under tow by a steam barge. No sooner In total, eight men and women
did the boats round the edge of Prince disappeared that day, and their bodies
At nearly the same spot, in 1952, Royal Edward County than they were caught in were never recovered. It was as if they
Canadian Air Force pilot Barry Allen what Capt. Anthony Malone of the barge had fallen through a crack in the lake, to
Newman plummeted from 20,000 feet described in the papers as “a living gale.” borrow a common phrase in Great Lakes
into the lake in a P-51 fighter. His body shipping lore.
was never recovered. Unable to withstand the force of the
heavy winds and mountainous seas, the (Continued on Page 61)
These days, Prince Edward County is tow line snapped, sending the Bavaria
best-known to visitors for its sandy careening into one of the other schooners. THE ‘X’ ZONE RADIO/TV SHOW
with
beaches and up-and-coming wineries. Fearing the worst, Malone circled his ROB McCONNELL
But there is a much darker side to the ship back to the Bavaria to offer www.XZBN.net
