Louisiana man recalls adventure in Devil’s Triangle
At dawn, February 4th, 1963, a New Orleans seaman saw a peculiar flash of light, followed by a boiling yellow, green cloud on the horizon in the Gulf of Mexico. Today, investigators believe he may have been the only human witness to the loss of the tanker S. S. Marine Sulphur Queen and her crew of thirty-nine sailors.
Of all the cold case mysteries Bayou Justice has reviewed over the years, this chapter marks the first time we explore the Bermuda Triangle. Perhaps coincidentally, over the last century, hundreds of planes and ships have vanished without explanation in a desolate area east of the Florida Keys.
Arvel M. Beckham, 61, chief steward aboard the S.S. Chemical Transporter, said his ship was traveling west, north of the Tortugas, a group of islands off the Florida coast. He sighted the flash and cloud somewhere in this area where the Sulphur Queen radioed from the night before she disappeared without explanation.
The vessel, a five-hundred twenty-four foot converted World War II tanker, left Beaumont, Texas, on February 2nd, 1963, for Norfolk, Virginia, with 15,000 tons of molten sulfur. Twenty-four hours later, a crew member sent a personal message over the ship’s radio, the last signal anyone got from the vessel. When her agent did not hear from the craft as scheduled, a massive sea and air search began. But the searchers found no evidence that the ship and three dozen crew members ever existed.
Beckham told UPI reporter Thomas K. Harvey he did not know about the ship’s disappearance at the time of the explosion. Instead, the peculiar color and configuration of the cloud held his attention.
He told Harvey, “I left my room midship about seven that morning and was walking aft for my morning coffee. As I neared the end of the catwalk, I caught this flash out of the corner of my eye, and when I turned off the catwalk, I saw this crazy cloud.”
“It was boiling upward from over the horizon. It was white, yellow, green, and purple in spots,” Beckham said. “A few seconds later, it took the shape of a woman holding a dog. I knew no one would believe me, so I hurried to my room for a camera. When I got back on deck, the cloud looked larger but still like a woman with her dog.”
“As the cloud woman moved toward the ship,” he said, “I lifted my camera and started clicking pictures.”
According to the production crew at United Press International, Beckham’s photos developed too dark to prove his vision. The day was overcast, and the photographed cloud did not outline clearly against the sky.
Thomas Harvey explained, “If one wished, he could distinguish a definite face and hairline of a woman. You can make out a French poodle with a little more concentration, but a skeptic could argue they were just odd clouds.”
U. S. Coast Guard investigators interviewed Arvel Beckham at his home in St. John Parish, listening attentively to his account. Then, they plotted the position of the S.S. Chemical Transporter at six thirty, the morning of February 4th. They also calculated the probable location of the Sulphur Queen at that time.
The Transporter at the time headed westbound for Harvey, Louisiana.
The officers believed the position where Beckham reported seeing the cloud was ahead of the probable location of the Sulphur Queen by eight or ten hours. However, they could not dismiss the report since they had no other clues.
They fed what little information they had into their massive computer and discussed the event with higher authorities in New York. Finally, they agreed to call Beckham as a witness before the board of inquiry looking into the ship’s disappearance.
On February 20th, near Key West, Florida, surfers found a plank with the ship’s name, prompting a second Coast Guard search, lasting another month. Unfortunately, aside from two shark-knawed life jackets and one oil can that may have come from the vessel, the remains of the Sulphur Queen and her crew have never been found.
The following May, a bottle containing a message written on brown paper washed ashore at Corpus Christi. The note read: “SOS Sulphur Queen. Help.” On the other side were the words: “Our ship was sailing steadily. Suddenly there was an explosion. Two men were hurt. That’s all I know.”
This find prompted yet another fruitless Coast Guard search.
One Coast Guard officer speculated, “If the missing tanker broke in two, seawater would cover her sulfur, and the ship would have gone up like an atom bomb.” Sulfur carriers keep sulfur at a temperature of 285 degrees, he explained, keeping it in a molten state. Then, they can load and unload the sulfur as a liquid.
Chemists at LSU in New Orleans told Coast Guard investigators that under certain conditions, fire combined with sulfur and moisture could produce a cloud of the type described by Beckham. However, they stressed such an explosion was only a possibility. Not likely, but not something to be ruled out arbitrarily.
When the Coast Guard exposed this “finding” in a report, relatives of Sulphur Queen crew members filed a lawsuit seeking $2.5 million in damages under two specific federal acts. The payout sought grew to $20 million by 1969.
The Sci-Fi Channel, the In Search Of television show, and numerous History Channel documentaries have recounted the Sulphur Queen’s disappearance inside the Bermuda Triangle. But the earliest report, written by Vincent Gaddis, appeared in Argosy Magazine shortly after the ship vanished.
The article opened with words I imagined Twilight Zone narrator Rod Serling saying:
“With a crew of thirty-nine, the tanker Marine Sulphur Queen began its final voyage on February 2nd, 1963, from Beaumont, Texas, with a cargo of molten sulfur. Its destination was Norfolk, Virginia. Instead, it sailed into the unknown…”