NPR

Wreck's Identification 95 Years After Ship's Disappearance Puts Theories To Rest

As it turns out, neither the Bermuda Triangle nor aliens are to blame for the Cotopaxi's sinking. It took Michael Barnette 15 years of research to identify the ship, which went down with 32 people.
An archival image of the SS Cotopaxi, taken in 1920.

Lore had it that the SS Cotopaxi was swallowed by the infamous Bermuda Triangle after the steamship, and all 32 crew members on board, inexplicably vanished in 1925.

In the sci-fi film Close Encounters of the Third Kind, aliens are responsible for the ship's disappearance.

But a team of divers has identified the ship and debunked the fictions, theories and conspiracies that emerged over the, the ship wasn't found in the Gobi Desert, but rather 35 miles off of St. Augustine in Florida.

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