The Frozen Triangle

"The zone of the unknown where ships are lost... and never found!"

- cover of The Frozen Triangle, by Carleton Rede

The Frozen Triangle was a novel written by Carlton Rede and published in 1932 by Azguard Books. It offers speculations about mysterious phenomenon within a region of the North Atlantic that Rede refers to as the "Frozen Triangle." Rede compares this "Frozen Triangle" to the Bermuda Triangle, but aleges that it is more deadly. Rede has authored many other books of "pulp fiction," including Animal ESP, Loch Ness Depths, Ghosts of Bermuda, and other equally ludicrous titles.

Something in the Sea
Mark Meltzer was reluctant to waste time reading this book when Jeremiah Lynch originally sent it to him in early July of 1968. Mark generally scoffed at anything Lynch sent him was related to "Atlantis." However, Mark's attitude toward this changed after he heard Orrin Oscar Lutwidge's recording "For the Seeker Who Would Win the Red Queen's Race," which mentioned the "icy triangle." When Mark finally read the book in late July he found that it contained a great deal of information relevant to pinpointing the location of Rapture. In fact, The coordinates of the Triangle's points in the book roughly match the tips of the red upside-down triangle on the Bellman's Chart.

Finding the "Frozen Triangle"


The Frozen Triangle, as detailed by the book has coordinate points at:
 * 67° N, 34° W
 * 63° N, 20° W
 * 57° N, 35° W

Plotting these coordinates in Google Earth reveals a triangle that stretches across an area of roughly 9 hundred thousand square miles of ocean between Greenland and Iceland.

Interestingly, the coordinates that Jack was given to hijack the plane in the beginning of BioShock (63° 2° N, 29° 55° W) fit roughly in the middle of the northern portion of this triangle. In fact, this central point could be interpreted to coincide with the point "N" at the center of one of Lutwidge's triangle diagrams on the first page of his notebook. Looking closely reveals that this diagram is almost an upside-down match of the triangle on the cover of Carleton Rede's book.


 * Note: The view of the Earth in Google Earth is an "General Perspective" projection, which is a type of Azimuthal map projection. This is a type of map that shows the least amount of distortion near the center of the map view.
 * Because of the distortion inherent in all map projections, the shape of the "Triangle" as it appears on a map will be different for different types of maps. A different map may show the Triangle more closely matching the shape of Lutwidge's diagram.

Transcripts of Book Pages
(These pages can no longer be viewed on the Something in the Sea Viral Website. Thank you to Meltzer of the 2K BioShock forums who transcribed them before they disappeared! )

Page 12

 * ..reports have risen sharply. Consider for a moment: with the advances in navigation and sonar - in waters no longer stalked by enemy U-boats - the number of shipwrecks has steadily climbed since the end of World War II. Since the official figures include only "shipwrecks," the NATO report, by definition, does not include the numerous airplanes that have crashed in the region. (These accidents, surely, cannot be laid off on unconvincing excuses like "forgotten mines'" or "submerged icebergs!") Nor does the list include the vessels that have simply vanished, nor the ships that have been discovered abandoned - often with disturbing evidence of an interrupted journey. (Take, for example, the strange case of the Vulmea. Its mess tables were still covered with half-eaten dinners!)


 * Even the most cursory examination of the evidence suggest that something very strange lurks beneath the cold blue waters of the North Atlantic. Since NATO will not release the full details of their report, we must confine ourselves to a partial list of the items most salient to our discussion as gleaned from various public reports and news items.

(the following paragraph has been encircled by Mark)


 * In the interests of rigor, let us agree upon the points that bound the triangle. We shall take Aliuarssik as our Northwestern mark (about 67° N, 34° W). The volcanic fumes of Surtsey Island shall mark our eastern point (at 63° N, 20° W). And we shall arbitrarily take a point 350 miles due southeast of Greenland's tip as the inverted peak of our triangle (at 57° North, 35° West). Henceforth. we shall discuss only incidents that occurred within those bounds - in a futile attempt to quell our facile critics!

(the following comment refers to the encircled passage)


 * O.O.L. - Tape #2: "WHAT THE ICY TRIANGLE CONCEALS!"
 * Triangle on map = these co-ords

Page 13

 * MAJOR INCIDENTS SINCE WORLD WAR II


 * 1946 .. Icelandic fisherman complain of "dead seas'' and
 * allege that oil slicks have killed off whole areas of
 * the ocean.


 * 1947 .. Repeated equipment failure on commercial vessels;
 * shipping routes are quietly shifted by NATO.


 * 1947 .. A USAF C47 "Skytrain" vanishes with 17 troops
 * and 2 decorated pilots after a bizarre final radio call.


 * 1953 .. The ill-fated Baldur vanishes during the second leg
 * of its quixotic attempt to follow the Viking charts.


 * 1955 .. Reports of a "phantom lighthouse" precedes the
 * discovery of six capsized Icelandic fishing vessels.


 * 1956 .. Final radio transmissions from the English research
 * vessel Ice Beagle before its disappearance.


 * 1959 .. The Vulmea is found adrift, its 14 man crew
 * missing.


 * 1960 .. Transatlantic jet DF-0301 vanishes with all crew
 * and 89 passengers; international search efforts fail.


 * 1960 .. Persistent rumors claim thai a nuclear submarine
 * sank while searching for Flight DF-0301.

Page 62

 * spite of all their protestations, all of these "knowledge-
 * able officials" were wrong. Islands absolutely can
 * appear out of nowhere! Anak Krakatau, the famous
 * "Child of Krakatoa," didn't come into its own until
 * 1930. Once an uninhabitable slag of molten rock, it
 * cooled and developed a rain forest, eventually popu-
 * lated by a veritable menagerie of animal life. Then
 * there's Banua Wuhu near Indonesia and Kavachi, a
 * now-you-see-it-now-you-don't volcanic peak near the
 * Solomons chain.


 * But the most famous "magically appearing" island
 * showed up within the confines of the Frozen Triangle!


 * One November morning in 1963, the cook on an
 * Icelandic trawler spotted a column of smoke. Fearing
 * that another vessel had caught fire, he alerted the crew.
 * Instead of a burning boat, they discovered a churning
 * sea - boiling with volcanic activity as hot ash burst
 * skyward. In the following days, a volcano broke the
 * surface and an island structure formed -soon growing
 * to over a thousand yards in diameter! The new land was
 * dubbed "Surtsey," after the fire-giant Surtur of Norse
 * mythology. Unlike many of the other ephemeral isles,
 * geologists believe that Surtsey is here to stay!


 * Is it possible that some of the strange phenomena of
 * the Frozen Triangle have been connected to the
 * region's underwater volcanic activity? Possibly some
 * of our missing vessels crashed against the shores of a
 * previously unknown isle, much like Surtsey!


 * Or perhaps the explanation lurks within the deeps?

(Note: Surtsey is a real volcanic island that formed along the south coast of Iceland in 1963. )

Page 63

 * CHAPTER 7


 * Leviathan!


 * The bizarre final transmission from the Ice Beagle
 * crackled through the receiver long after midnight. Hours
 * earlier, the beleaguered research vessel reported that their
 * instruments had gone wild. As the crew fought through
 * dense fog, a radio call stuttered through the night: "That
 * doesn't make sense. It shouldn't be there." Then, moments
 * later, a second call: "Do you see them? They're watching
 * us!" Then - silence!


 * Who -- or what -- was watching the Ice Beagle?
 * The Ice Beagle's last known position was over 200 miles
 * from any known land mass in an expanse of water 2000
 * meters deep. A rarely patrolled stretch of icy, inhospitable
 * ocean, the area hardly teemed with life. Yet the crew had
 * seen something that clearly did not belong. And these
 * weren't bored, uneducated sailors. This sighting came
 * from a team of scientists trained observers all!


 * They had come out into these waters to search for lost
 * beasts of legend and folklore. Was their mission cut short
 * by the very beasts they sought?


 * The Ice Beagle was the brainchild of Dr. Nayland Fitch.
 * As a precocious lad, young Nayland would devour scien-
 * tific texts on the stoop while waiting for his father to return
 * from his deep sea fishing expeditions. Young Nayland hung
 * on every word of his father's tall tales of strange creatures
 * caught in the nets - of giant spider crabs and wee "invisible
 * shrimp". To young Nayland, such beasts sounded no more
 * absurd than the animals Charles Darwin described in his