"Mysterious Disappearance of the USS Cyclops" Topic
8 Posts
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 Editor in Chief Bill  | 06 Mar 2025 1:47 p.m. PST |
In early March 1918, the USS Cyclops set sail from Barbados, bound for Baltimore. She carried manganese ore vital to the war effort. But somewhere in the vast expanse of the Atlantic, she disappeared. There was not a single distress call. She was gone without a trace. More than a hundred years later, the fate of the Cyclops and the 306 souls aboard remains one of the greatest maritime mysteries of all time… Fold3: link |
Extrabio1947  | 06 Mar 2025 3:37 p.m. PST |
The USS Cyclops' two sister ships were also lost in the Triangle: USS Proteus (58 souls) and USS Nereus (61 souls). Like the Cyclops, neither ship has ever been found. A naval inquiry found these colliers were "poorly constructed and extremely vulnerable to breaking up in heavy seas." Of course, that doesn't explain why none of these ships has ever been found. Shame the navy didn't figure that out earlier. |
 20thmaine | 07 Mar 2025 4:35 a.m. PST |
They should kept an eye on it…. |
| 20thmaine | 07 Mar 2025 8:41 a.m. PST |
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 foxbat | 08 Mar 2025 5:13 a.m. PST |
LOL! My first acquaintance with USS Cyclops was through Charles Berlitz's "The Bermuda Triangle" book. As I was a teenager then, I found he made a fairly convincing case that little green men had abducted it… *chuckles* Now, more seriously, Wikipedia has a fairly good page on it, summarizing what I found about the case later in life. link To sum it up, you won't have a definitive answer till the wreck is found, if ever. But factoring a dysfunctional (to say the least) skipper, a cargo heavier and denser than what the ship had been designed for, a storm and leaky hatches give an ample enough case for a shipwreck. The fact that 2 sister ships went down in very similar circumstances hints at some kind of design structural defect. BTW, the last ship in class became the USN's first aircraft carrier, USS Langley, that was sunk off Java by the IJN. |
 Wolfshanza | 08 Mar 2025 10:19 p.m. PST |
Wasn't it loaded badly with something very heavy ? Think the hitler channel had something on it ? Just went blub in heavy seas ? |
| JoLeCaliPout | 20 Jul 2025 1:08 p.m. PST |
There is a small report of a storm about the time Cyclops was sailing. The trouble is we don't know where she went down, so finding her is going to be a matter of chance.
Three of four went down in heavy weather, the design wasn't the most stable with the high cranes, and Cyclops' sisters were decades old when they were lost. Not really a mystery, but still a sad tale. |
| 138SquadronRAF | 21 Jul 2025 7:02 a.m. PST |
Himmel Herrgott nochmal! Can't we move away from the whole "Bermuda Triangle" hoax? Draw a triangle between Dover, Scapa Flow, and Hamburg and you'll get a greater number of unexplained disappearances. Foxbat gave plenty of reason for the loss of the Cyclops. Add to that top heavy design, you've more than enough reason for the loss. |
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