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Well, someone has indeed offered an alternate. They won’t put their own name on the theory. The anonymity given Wikipedia’s editors allows a certain type of boldness to thrive thereon. It reminds me of the joke about the new psychiatrist at the asylum. He is checking the patient chits at the bottom of each bed. One reads “This patient believes he is Napoleon.” He looks at the patient lying on the bed.
“What makes you think you are Napoleon?” he asks.
“Because God told me so,” replies the patient.
A voice rises up from the next bed. “Oh, no I didn’t.”
What type of person do you think is attracted to a cracker barrel or a soap box? It’s the kind who wants to spout their own gospel. Wikipedia is especially prone to such characters. It’s a glorified message board where those amending it are basically unseen moderators. In reference to Great Isaac’s Lighthouse, some unnamed moderator saw fit to write this:
“On August 4, 1969, the station was discovered to have been abandoned by its two keepers, who were never found. [source given: Lighthouses of the Bahamas] Many believers in the Bermuda Triangle claim that the keepers were two more victims lost to its mysterious forces.[source given is my book.] However, the hurricane record from 1969 indicates that Hurricane Anna, the first hurricane of 1969, on 2 August, passed close enough to Great Isaac Island to cause dangerous weather for the tiny rock island. By the 4th of August, the hurricane was well into the Atlantic Ocean.” No source given for the last sentence.
In fact, Tropical Storm Anna’s (it was not a hurricane) path can be accessed on line just by Googling Hurricane Season of 1969. Texas Tech University holds Tetsuya Theodore Fujita’s plotting of the tropical storm, and The Atlantic Hurricane Season of 1969 can be accessed at the link above at Noaa. To quote:
The path of Anna was a rather classical one, beginning near the African coast, resembling the contours of the Bermuda High, passing within 150 mi of Cape Hatteras, and finally moving into the North Atlantic and joining a vigorous extratropical low-pressure system north of the Azores. . . .
. . . Anna probably reached storm intensity on the 27th, and may have obtained her maximum intensity during the next 24 hr. The Plymouth Victory reported winds of 40 kt and a surface pressure of 1006 mb late on the 27th while apparently some distance from the center. Satellite photographs also looked most impressive on the 27th and 28th.
When Anna first reached tropical storm intensity, conditions appeared favorable for deepening to hurricane intensity. Instead, the development of a large middle-level and upper level cyclone between Puerto Rico and Bermuda produced an extremely hostile environment which Anna had to traverse for an extended period. The result was a gradual weakening and contraction in size, with a turn to a more northwesterly heading.
After finally escaping from the upper level cold system, Anna began to regain intensity as she approached the Hatteras area. Navy reconnaissance during the afternoon of August 2 indicated winds of storm intensity, but also showed a turning away from the mainland. No coastal warnings were necessary, Two factors that are believed to be most important in the reintensification of the system were the higher sea-surface temperatures and a minimum wind shear in the vertical just off the Middle Atlantic coastal region.
So, basically, the annotator of Wikipedia suggests the following: that during the less intense, contracting phase of the storm, while it passed about 400 miles from Florida, Tropical Storm Anna was enough to affect the disappearance of the lighthouse keepers over 300 miles away. To put this in perspective, after Anna regains intensity it passes 150 miles off Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, but no coastline warnings were necessary. So as a weaker storm 300 miles away from Bimini, how much do you really think it affected Great Isaac’s Rock?
You can’t make this stuff up.
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