The Dragon's Triangle

by Charles Berlitz; Grafton Books, 208 pp; $14.95 (paperback)

Reviewed by Denis Dutton

In the 1970s, Charles Berlitz tried to convince us that strange, paranormal forces were at work off the coast of Florida, in the so-called Bermuda Triangle, causing frequent, mysterious disappearances of ships and planes. Where had these craft gone? Transported to Atlantis, or perhaps Mars?

The myth was exploded by researcher Larry Kusche, who painstakingly went through Berlitz's "unexplained" events, showing how unmysterious they were. Kusche also did a Statistical survey which showed that you're probably safer sailing through the Bermuda Triangle that off Long Island or the California coast.

With interest in the Bermuda Triangle waning, Berlitz has found new seas to muddy. The Dragon's Triangle, described as "more menacing, infinitely more dangerous" than the Bermuda Triangle, is a thin, pointy figure extending south of Tokyo to the Mariana Islands.

Having identified his target area, Berlitz proceeds to list the many ships and planes that have disappeared there. Since it's another high-traffic area, there are lots of unexplained disappearances. However, as we're given no comparative statistics, there is no reason to believe anything strange going on.

Nevertheless, chapters on Japanese sea legends, ghost

20 New Zealand Skeptic ships, UFOs, earthquakes and tsunamis, vanished civilisations, and atomic testing follow in succession. Berlitz quickly loses sight of the actual location of his Dragon Triangle, and drags in any odd occurrence in the Pacific.

Was the Korean jetliner KAL 007 sent disastrously off course by a mysterious magnetic fluctuation? To hear Berlitz tell it, you'd imagine the navigator sitting in the cockpit with a Boy Scout compass.

Flying Saucers are of course mandatory, so there is a gullible account of our very own Kaikoura UFO incident. Also of local interest, John Macmillan Brown is brought in to show that there might have been a great vanished civilisation in the Pacific.

After all, Berlitz says, "New Zealand contains huge and complex drainage systems dating to the distant past which presuppose not only great skill in building and design, but also the availability of a vast supply of labor and the logistical expertise to properly house, feed, and manage them." Moreover, oral tradition reveals that Easter Island is actually part of a sunken land called "Hiva". Berlitz explains that "Hiva' is also the name given by the Maoris of New Zealand to their land of origin...".

And so the reader is led through myriad improbable or paranormal explanations to account for the mysterious goings-on in the Dragon's Triangle. Ultimately, Berlitz says, a black hole might account for it...but, no wait, perhaps it is "watchers beneath the waves...left over from the last great era of civilisation, which, if ancient sources are to be believed, destroyed itself with fire from the skies." Or has atomic testing "awakened long-dormant, long sunken defenses from a millenia-old war?" Godzilla?