Original subtitles

- Three, two, one, dive!

- Tonight on "The Bermuda Triangle:

Into Cursed Waters"...

- They were in business together, and...

and I don't know what, but whatever it was,

something was going sour.

- A brand-new luxury yacht out on its trial run vanishes.

- Maybe it's just my Spidey sense,

but there's something sketchy going on here.

- This boat was staying the same distance,

and then getting a little closer.

- Modern-day Blackbeards pose a threat.

- Did pirates send the yacht to her grave?

- There's some element of organized crime.

- This is deep sea detective work at its best.

- Or could it be something else?

- There was electrical blackouts.

- It causes the Earth to ring like a bell.

[loud bang]

[dramatic music]

- It's the Bermuda Triangle.

Everybody disappears down there.

I never saw him again.

♪ ♪

- There is a place that evokes fear and fascination.

Bounded by Florida, Bermuda, and Puerto Rico,

the Bermuda Triangle has swallowed countless ships,

planes, and people.

♪ ♪

Now, an elite team is on the hunt...

- Dive, dive, dive.

- And making big finds.

- We've discovered "Challenger."

- Their secret weapon...

a wreck map decades in the making.

- These are dangerous dives.

- Ah!

- Any sane person would not be doing this.

- Their mission... solve the mystery

of the Bermuda Triangle, one wreck at a time.

- Dude, are you seeing this?

- Mother Nature is going to take these wrecks away.

The clock is ticking.

♪ ♪

[water burbling]

♪ ♪

- Anytime you're diving in a wreck

that potentially has a loss of life, it is a sobering moment.

It gives you purpose.

You want to identify the wreck, so they're not forgotten.

[birds cawing]

- Elite wreck hunters Mike Barnette and Jimmy Gadomski

are heading directly to an area of the Bermuda Triangle

where countless small boats have vanished.

- Every year, dozens of large vessels are lost at sea.

We can't forget, over that same time frame,

hundreds if not thousands

of small recreational-type vessels are lost as well.

- Today, Mike and Jimmy are investigating

one of the Triangle's most perplexing

small boat disappearances...

a brand-new luxury yacht called the "Saba Bank,"

that was last seen on March 10, 1974.

- The "Saba Bank" was crewed by four guys

out of Atlantic City, New Jersey.

- The captain's name was Cy Zentner,

and he had with him his cousin, Elliott Cohen,

as well as a contractor by the name of Johnny Tarquinio.

And then there was Raphael Kaplan

from the company that owned the boat.

- And they had just purchased the "Saba Bank" for $300,000.

- With plans to rent the luxury yacht out

as a dive charter boat,

the crew needed to do a test run, or shakedown cruise,

to get out any kinks.

And what a terrific time of year

to get out of the northeast.

- It could just be the fact that they wanted

to escape the winter cold, and get a free trip

down to the Caribbean.

- Strangely, for such a voyage,

they told no one their schedule.

- They did not leave any indication

of what their course was going to be,

or where they were planning to go.

- The weather is perfect for smooth sailing

in the Caribbean.

Witnesses see the boat in the Bahamas and Jamaica,

and we know it was supposed to return to Miami.

13 days into their trip,

Tarquinio sends home a short telegram via radio.

- One of the crew members sent out a radio message

to his family on March 23, 1974,

and said that the trip is going to be longer.

And that was the last message,

and the "Saba Bank" disappeared,

never to be seen again.

[tense music]

- The Coast Guard begins an extensive search.

Neither the yacht nor the bodies

of the four crew members are ever found.

- Almost every article is that

it got lost in the Devil's Triangle.

And they associated the missing "Saba Bank"

to the curse of the Bermuda Triangle right away.

- Now, nearly 50 years after the "Saba Bank" disappeared,

Mike and Jimmy's mission is to find the missing yacht.

They have two suspects in mind.

Both are right near the "Saba Bank's"

intended final destination,

and appear to be roughly the right size.

[chain rattling]

Their first target... the Bug Light wreck,

named after a light tower nearby.

- The wreck's right here.

We have the bow section, and then goes out

that way towards the stern, and it's kind of broken

in the middle right there.

We're only in about 25 feet of water.

- Since it's a shallow dive,

the team is able to set up an extra luxury,

allowing Jimmy to talk to safety diver Kiki Dee.

- To be able to communicate while he's down there

is a totally new, new thing. [laughs]

♪ ♪

- Trying to identify a more common

smaller recreational craft, it's much more difficult.

They don't stick out, they don't stand out.

♪ ♪

It's very much like a cold case murder, where you're trying

to gather little bits of information

to reveal that this is indeed the "Saba Bank."

- On such a shallow dive, the divers

can spend up to 55 minutes on the bottom,

since they won't need a long ascent to decompress.

- Divers ready when you are.

♪ ♪

- Everyone's clear.

♪ ♪

- I'm here. Can you hear me?

♪ ♪

- [breathing through apparatus]

[calm music]

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

- What condition is the wreck in?

♪ ♪

Jimmy?

♪ ♪

Hey, Jimmy, are you OK?

♪ ♪

This is scary.

I'm hanging on to, like, every word that he's saying.

[radio static]

- That's a Goliath grouper.

♪ ♪

- As Mike and Jimmy explore the Bug Light wreck,

they collect evidence that could help identify it.

[radio static]

- He's in treasure hunting world right now.

- Jimmy, did you guys find something?

♪ ♪

- They found a bathroom.

- A toilet like this is more than just junk.

It can contain markings that ID the wreck.

- OK. Copy that.

♪ ♪

So what did you see down there?

- A lot of portholes, a lot of nice fixtures.

It's obviously been down a long time.

It's not giving up its name to us.

But I imagine she was really pretty in her day.

- Right.

- Probably a nice little luxury yacht.

- But not the "Saba Bank."

- It's decades older, and made of steel instead of fiberglass

like the "Saba Bank."

Nevertheless, it's an intriguing mystery of its own.

Mike and Jimmy will take video of the wreck's features

back to the team, so they can try to ID it.

But first, there's another wreck to explore.

- I think we have a little bit of daylight left.

Maybe we can go out and check another target.

- Hoping their second suspect wreck

is a stronger match for the "Saba Bank,"

the team heads 15 miles further south.

- So we named Paul's Wreck after a friend

of mine that actually took us out to the site

for the first time.

He's not a diver himself, but he shared our curiosity

of what was off of Miami.

♪ ♪

- This next dive is much deeper,

and Jimmy will not be on comms.

Plus, there's a strong current...

so strong that the captain will not be able

to hold the boat steady on an anchor line.

The divers will have to do a hot drop,

a freefall dropping down 160 feet.

If anything goes wrong,

there will be no line down to the wreck

for Kiki to follow to find them.

- Divers, ready when you are.

- Neutral! Dive, dive, dive!

♪ ♪

[device whirring]

- [breathing through apparatus]

- It's very akin to skydiving.

We jump off the boat up current,

and use the current to drift us into the wreck

as we're descending down.

[device whirring]

- As soon as we hit the bottom, hopefully

we'll find the wreck, there'll be no issues.

- So it's just basic math and a good setup and a good drop,

and we should hit the wreck correctly.

♪ ♪

- The pressure at this depth allows them just 40 minutes

before they have to resurface.

But there's a problem.

- We hit the bottom. We didn't see the wreck.

It wasn't in sight.

But we weren't really sure if we overshot or undershot it.

So we turned around, scooted back into the current.

♪ ♪

- Eventually, it appeared in the gloom.

♪ ♪

It's collapsed quite a bit.

It's looking like a pile of rubble.

- It's a fiberglass yacht, and the same approximate size

as the "Saba Bank," which was 54 feet long.

But as the team continues their search,

Jimmy spots an unusual artifact and moves in.

- As we're trying to find additional clues,

Jimmy saw something shiny.

- I see a pole that's a little bit out of place,

so I grabbed onto that pole.

♪ ♪

[loud bang]

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

- Something imploded, and it was still live.

[loud bang]

I wasn't sure what happened.

It was just... it's such a loud noise,

and so close, the proximity to it.

- It wasn't immediately clear if something had imploded.

So I looked at our camera operator

to make sure his camera didn't implode.

Maybe it wasn't us.

It was something nearby,

because sound travels very far underwater, very quickly.

♪ ♪

- Mike Barnette and Jimmy Gadomski

are diving an unidentified wreck nicknamed

Paul's Wreck, a target they hope

is the luxury yacht the "Saba Bank."

It famously went missing nearly 50 years ago,

after cruising the Bermuda Triangle

before it was scheduled to arrive in Miami.

Topside, one cameraman, Rich Stevenson,

surfaces early and tells Kiki Dee that Jimmy's been injured.

- What?

- How badly, she doesn't know.

- Something blew up in Jimmy's hand.

Immediately, I'm just pretty worried.

I just don't know what to think exactly.

- Kiki has a difficult decision to make.

If she dives, there's no anchor line to follow,

and she could lose the wreck.

It's better to hold tight and give first aid on the surface

if he needs it.

- There really isn't much I can do,

so I just have to wait.

♪ ♪

- I was stunned.

The first thing that I did was look at my hand.

I was in a lot of pain.

♪ ♪

Barney asked if I wanted to continue the dive

or thumb it right there.

♪ ♪

- The dive is over.

The wreck's identification will have to wait.

- We can't even talk to the guys,

because they're still on deco.

- Jimmy and Mike begin their slow ascent,

decompressing on the way.

- And that's like the waiting game of dread.

I just want to hear what happened so badly.

Is there, like, a hole in Jimmy's hand?

[tense music]

- 25 minutes later, they surface.

Jimmy's in pain, but he's not bleeding.

- It sounds like you guys had a very exciting dive.

- Wondering if the camera caught the explosion.

- Did you pick up that, uh, that boom?

- Yeah, it's on audio, yeah.

What did you touch that you shouldn't have touched, Jimmy?

♪ ♪

- So I'm going through the artifacts that

are left on the wreck, and I see a pole

that's where the wheelhouse used to be.

So I grabbed onto that pole,

and the pole exploded in my hand.

[loud bang]

- But then we started seeing things...

- Barnette believes Jimmy picked up an old spear

used by a fisherman.

- What it turned out to be was a powerhead

used for either spearing large fish,

or as a defensive mechanism against sharks.

And it was still live.

- It's basically a bullet in a spear fishing shaft,

and if it hits the fish, the fish is pretty much done for.

- Fortunately, he was mere inches,

if not millimeters away from basically blowing

several of his fingers off.

- The dive team heads home with footage of all the clues

they found at the two wrecks.

♪ ♪

Back on shore, Mike and Jimmy meet up

with the team's research muscle,

historian David O'Keefe.

- So why don't you guys bring me up to speed

on what you've been up to?

- We were working off Miami. We had a lot of targets.

We had two in particular that really caught our attention.

- First, they zero in on the Bug Light wreck.

- Bug Light wreck was very shallow.

♪ ♪

- We know the "Saba Bank" was a fiberglass hull,

and this is a steel-hull vessel.

Also, it was big, much bigger

than we would expect the "Saba Bank" to be.

♪ ♪

- 20 feet longer than the "Saba Bank,"

yet close enough to look similar on sonar.

- We did find a really unique artifact,

this one toilet fixture.

We can see the manufacturer information,

and when it was produced.

We were able to figure out it was

a British-manufactured toilet, Gosport, United Kingdom.

And we also have the patent information

that dates it to the 1920s.

This was a very elegant vessel.

It suffered some kind of, you know, setback and sunk.

- They don't have a name, so they'll add it

to their list for further research.

But now they focus on their second dive target.

And this one is a more promising match

for the "Saba Bank."

- Paul's Wreck is a luxury-type vessel,

a 50-foot-long yacht.

- The "Saba Bank" checks in.

It's 50-plus feet.

- So that raised our curiosity.

Could this potentially be "Saba Bank"?

And we know that "Saba Bank" was purpose-built

to be a dive charter vessel.

There's a lot of dive gear on it.

In fact, we actually had to end the dive early

because we had a little incident.

Some of the dive gear actually fought back.

- What do you mean, it fought back?

- Here.

[loud bang]

Ah!

- Wow.

- So we want to go back to the wreck,

see if we can find a name or a registration number on it.

Don't worry, I'm going to be slapping his hand

when he tries to grab stuff.

- Well, look.

I mean, the land team right now,

we're going to dive into the "Saba Bank."

We don't know what happened to it.

It could be anything from natural disasters

to human error.

- The team splits up.

Mike and Jimmy prepare for a second dive on Paul's Wreck,

hoping to prove they found the "Saba Bank."

Meanwhile, Dave heads to Seattle

to team up with investigator Wayne Abbott.

They're trying to figure out why there was no distress call

from the "Saba Bank."

- How come we don't have a final SOS coming off of this?

Is it a question of something catastrophic?

- With a ship that had

the best radio possible at that time,

it should have sent out a distress call.

- That's where you have to circle around.

Why didn't we get that final message?

- Ever since the advent of the wireless telegraph

more than a century ago,

reports of radios failing and electronics shorting out

are a common theme in the Bermuda Triangle.

Some have referred to this phenomenon as electronic fog.

But what is it?

- Tamitha, thanks a lot for sitting down with us.

- David and Wayne meet with space physicist Tamitha Skov.

- We're looking at what was going on

with the Earth's magnetic field.

- One theory is that "Saba Bank" may have been prevented

from sending distress calls in the Bermuda Triangle

because of storms on the sun.

- When the sun is very active,

you actually get things like solar flares

as well as solar storms.

When that solar storm actually reaches Earth,

it actually hits Earth's magnetic shield.

- That sounds pretty volatile.

- Well, it causes the Earth to ring like a bell,

and that can disrupt things like radio communications.

- A solar flare is a release of energy associated

with sunspots that can cause intense radiation

to hit the Earth.

- So if a boat like the "Saba Bank"

gets hit by a solar storm,

what would happen to their radio equipment?

- The "Saba Bank" would be like a cricket near a train track.

It would chirp, chirp, chirp, chirp,

but no one's going to hear the cricket because of the train.

- Tamitha consults records of these solar shockwaves

that go back to 1859.

- This looks like a musical score.

- Yes.

When you go up to the bigger tall notes,

that really shows you where the big storms are.

- We're specifically looking for, say,

March 20th to the beginning of April 1974.

- On the 20th through the 23rd,

there was a big geomagnetic storm at that time.

- Could these geomagnetic storms

produce the electronic fog that's been described

in the Triangle area?

If so, could it have temporarily interfered

with the "Saba Bank's" electronics,

preventing the captain from calling for help?

Digging deeper, that theory doesn't fit.

- This is where it's waning.

So by the 24th, it looks like

they navigated through that, just...

- Then afterwards?

- And then afterwards, they were smooth sailing,

so to speak, at least as far

as the space weather was concerned.

- So we're looking for something different.

- Tamitha knows of no technical reason

the crew of the "Saba Bank" couldn't call for help,

which makes the team wonder,

maybe they didn't want anyone to know where they were.

- One of the mysteries behind this is,

why were such an inexperienced crew

put on a very expensive new yacht?

- Maybe it's the Spidey sense, but there's something

really sketchy going on here.

- So what are the next steps, then, for you guys?

- Paul's Wreck deserves another look.

What do you think?

- Yeah, I think there's more evidence to be found,

and hopefully we can identify it.

- While David O'Keefe and Wayne Abbott

continue their investigation on land,

Mike Barnette, Jimmy Gadomski, and Kiki Dee

are going back out to attempt another dive of Paul's Wreck.

- We're heading off Miami

to go find the wreck of "Saba Bank."

- As they sail out, a light rain starts

and heavy clouds appear.

♪ ♪

- The weather was a lot rougher than we intended it to be.

[engine roaring]

♪ ♪

- Jimmy and Mike decide it's too dangerous

to even consider diving.

Unpredictable conditions like this

can account for many Bermuda Triangle disappearances.

- We could have got hurt ourselves,

so we wanted to get a better day to dive.

- While Mike and Jimmy wait for better conditions,

David O'Keefe and Wayne Abbott are

digging up information about the crew of the "Saba Bank."

- What do we know about the people on board?

- We don't know much.

But we are going to see this guy Jim,

and he was best friends with one of the guys on board.

- They've tracked down Jim Huffstickler,

a buddy of Johnny Tarquinio.

- Hey, Jim. How are you?

- Hey, fellas.

- Jim is a retired police officer.

- So you've been thinking about this for a while.

I mean, this is almost 50 years ago, now.

- I remember like it was yesterday.

♪ ♪

- Back in the early 1970s, Jim got a job working construction

for Johnny in New Jersey.

- At the time in Vineland, New Jersey,

there was a boom in building housing.

There were several contractors out there

building tract homes,

and Johnny was one of them.

[tools banging]

- During this time, Jim also met Cy Zentner,

the captain of the "Saba Bank."

- Cy, he was a little standoffish.

As my mother would say, a little shifty.

- In the 1970s, the area had become a hotbed

for organized crime, especially with the pressure

to legalize gambling in nearby Atlantic City.

Jim thinks Tarquinio might have gotten in over his head

with a project there.

- There was a lot of criminal activity going on

in Atlantic City at the time, because of the casinos coming.

- A lot of corruption in the 1970s in that area.

- Might have been tied in with something like that.

- Jim points to some suspicious details

about the "Saba Bank's" crew.

For one thing, no one on the crew,

other than the captain, had experience as sailors.

- These are the four guys that were on the boat.

That's Johnny.

- There's Kaplan. - Kaplan, right.

- A secretary for the boat's owner.

- That's Cohen.

- He's the captain's cousin.

- I have no idea what business they were in.

- Did he tell you the reason why he was

going to go on the "Saba Bank"?

- No. All he said was they were going to Nassau

and some of the other islands, but he didn't say why.

I think it was a business trip

more so than a fishing expedition.

♪ ♪

- Was Tarquinio part of an inexperienced crew

that had some other business in mind

besides running the boat through its paces?

And did it have something to do with threatening calls

Jim claims Tarquinio received just before the fatal trip?

[phone rings]

- I was in Johnny's house.

All of a sudden, the phone rang.

And this is about 12:30 at night.

He says, Jim, answer that.

He goes, no, I mean, I've been getting some weird calls.

Answer it.

And I said hello, and this voice says,

Tarquinio, I'm going to kill you.

- A death threat.

♪ ♪

- Somebody don't like you, Johnny.

Said he's going to kill you.

I said, are you messing with somebody's wife or something?

He said, no, no, no.

I said, got anything to do with that project?

He said, naw, no, no.

I don't know what that's about.

- And this is just, like, a week or two before they left.

- About two weeks before they left.

- Hmm.

- And he told me he had been getting those calls

for a couple of weeks.

I think Johnny was involved in something,

and I don't know what, but whatever it was,

something was going sour.

♪ ♪

[waves crashing]

- What did you think happened?

- I think they went down there

and whatever he was messing with

got rid of them out in the ocean,

and then probably sunk the boat.

Shook his hand.

I said, nice knowing you, Johnny.

I said, well, you're not coming back.

That's the Bermuda Triangle.

Everybody disappears down there.

And he said, oh, that's a bunch of BS.

I said, I don't know, man.

A lot of stuff happens down there, Johnny.

Very mysterious.

Then they left, and I never saw him again.

- Nobody is really sure what kind of business

they're in together, but they're definitely

in some sort of business.

- And then they all disappear. - Yeah.

[dramatic music]

- After canceling their dive due to rough seas...

- Mike and Jimmy are back on shore waiting for the weather

to clear, while Dave and Wayne explore

Jim Huffstickler's theory that the crew got caught up

in some criminal enterprise.

But what?

- And then they all disappear. - Yeah.

- You know, Dave, how much do you know about organized crime

and what was going on off the coast of Florida in the 1970s?

- Well, other than seeing a couple of movies

and some television shows, I mean,

you certainly know that it was a crazy time for drug running.

What I've done is I've reached out to Joe Spillane.

Joe is an expert on drug trafficking

at this particular point.

He's written many books and articles about this.

♪ ♪

- Joe, thanks for meeting us. - Absolutely.

- I mean, you know that we're investigating

a very bizarre mystery in the Bermuda Triangle.

[tense music]

♪ ♪

- If you mention nefarious in 1974 in Florida,

you're talking about the drug trade.

These are the boom years.

- Drug enforcement officials admit that they're only

stopping a small number of the marijuana shipments

coming into this country.

- This is where an enormous quantity of marijuana

is coming into the United States.

It's really the Wild West.

- It's sort of like the gold rush, I guess.

Pretty much anybody is trying to get in on this.

- That includes South American cartels,

American mobsters, and local opportunists.

- A single successful run could net them

hundreds of thousands of dollars.

It becomes pretty attractive, not just to the professionals,

but to the amateurs as well.

- There's no hard evidence, but could the four men

aboard the "Saba Bank"

have been looking to make a quick buck?

♪ ♪

After leaving Miami, the "Saba Bank" stopped in Nassau.

From there, they sailed to Jamaica

with the intention of completing the trip

back where they started.

But before leaving Jamaica,

they might have found trouble,

according to federal investigators.

- The officials say, "Prior to the boat's departure,

"there were suspicious and known drug types

hanging around the 'Saba Bank.'"

- They don't know the characters

they're dealing with.

They don't recognize trouble when they see it.

- Did the crew go into business

with the wrong kind of people,

and did it lead to their disappearance?

All we know is that after Jamaica,

Johnny sends that last message home.

- And that was it.

The "Saba Bank" disappeared, never to be seen again.

- But it's new evidence Spillane offers

that leads Dave and Wayne to another possibility...

that the crew disappeared not because they were involved

in a criminal enterprise,

but because they were victims of one.

- So the interesting thing is congressional investigators

report there could be hundreds of ships that are potentially

victims of hijacking.

Congress actually holds a hearing on the hijacking

of ships in the Caribbean,

but it's months after the "Saba Bank's" disappearance.

- Federal officials learn that 200 sailors have gone missing

due to suspected piracy, and the report states

that the "Saba Bank's" crew might be among them.

- And it says here, "Law enforcement officials

assume most or all have been murdered."

So they didn't let anybody go.

- These guys would not hesitate to use violence,

if it furthered their ends.

- No witnesses. - No.

- South American drug runners brought

their contraband north, and sometimes

stole small boats that they used to sneak drugs

into the U.S.

- If you are out there on the waters of the Caribbean,

there is the potential that modern-day Blackbeards

are going to pose a threat to you and your vessel.

- So the crew were just piloting this boat

right into the hotbed of modern piracy.

♪ ♪

- Probably without knowing it.

- There are competing theories on what happened

to the crew of the "Saba Bank," but we now know

the U.S. government believed they may have been

the victims of modern pirates.

Wayne returns to Seattle to meet with historian

Peggy Sigler and find out firsthand

how these pirates operated.

- Peggy. Wayne Abbott.

- Hi, nice to meet you.

- Soon after the "Saba Bank" went missing,

Peggy's family was on an almost identical yacht

when they had a run-in with suspected pirates.

- You know that we're investigating a yacht

that went missing in 1974, just off the coast of Florida

in the Bermuda Triangle.

And this is supposedly its sister ship?

- Yes.

This is the same model.

They made 26 of these between '72 and '74.

- These yachts, designed by the legendary Arthur DeFever,

were rare and in high demand.

- They were the Cadillac of the boating community at the time.

People that bought them were CEOs of General Electric

or Hewlett Packard.

So it was quite a trendy toy among the rich crowd.

♪ ♪

- This is a boat that you build for people to see.

They were going to notice this.

- Yes.

I suspect it really stood out in the marinas

and the harbors.

- Designed to go long distances,

these luxury yachts had plenty of room.

- There is a lot of storage, some obvious and easy

to get to, some under beds, behind walls or panels.

There was a space for everything.

- Including space below decks for cargo,

legal or otherwise.

But Peggy points out that the yacht

had one significant drawback...

its speed, making it a target for hijackers.

- They go eight knots, so they're slow.

They're not going to be able to get anyplace fast.

They're definitely not going to make a getaway.

♪ ♪

- Peggy's in-laws owned the DeFever yacht

that drew the attention of suspected pirates.

- They were coming towards the Caribbean islands.

They were off cruising by themselves,

and they saw on the radar this boat

following them at a distance,

and they weren't moving fast at all.

- Usually, Peggy's family traveled with a buddy boat

for protection.

But this time, they're alone.

- This boat was staying the same distance,

and then getting a little closer.

And my in-laws had a pistol on board,

and they put it on over their shorts

to protect themselves in case they thought they needed it.

- Peggy believes the other sailors saw the weapon.

- And then the boat turned and went a different direction.

- Something similar to Peggy's personal story

could have happened to the "Saba Bank" crew,

but with a much more disturbing ending.

- As Peggy said, this is a hard boat to lose.

The "Saba Bank" could have been the target,

and not the crew.

- If "Saba Bank" was hijacked and her crew murdered,

where did the hijackers take the boat?

♪ ♪

[propellers whirring]

Previous searches for the "Saba Bank" by the Coast Guard

were unsuccessful.

But no one looked in the waters off Miami,

the intended final stop on the yacht's trip,

and also a well-known smuggling port

for pirates in the '70s.

So that's exactly where Mike Barnette,

Jimmy Gadomski, and Kiki Dee are headed...

back to Paul's Wreck.

Their goal is to give the "Saba Bank"

her final chapter.

♪ ♪

- Right now, the guys are on Paul's Wreck.

Today, the conditions are amazing.

[tense music]

- We need to find something more definitive

to help us identify if Paul's Wreck is the "Saba Bank."

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- It's pretty clear that Paul's Wreck

is actually a fiberglass hull vessel,

just like the "Saba Bank."

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- The wreck looks about 50-ish foot long,

and we know that "Saba Bank" was a 54-foot charter vessel.

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We started finding some really cool stuff.

We found cameras.

- But the film is no longer viable.

- It's been underwater for so long.

And once that salt water gets to the film, it destroys it.

It's toast.

- Surprisingly, a notebook that could be

the ship's logbook remains.

- I picked up the book, and it just kind of

disintegrated in my hand.

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- Mother Nature is not kind to things left in the ocean.

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- And there are more clues pointing

to the "Saba Bank," which was intended

for use as a dive boat.

- We found a dive tank...

- And a regulator attached to the dive tank.

As we cleaned off that top of the scuba tank a little bit,

we saw a visual inspection sticker.

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- And as they swim to the stern,

something new catches their attention.

- As we're cleaning the transom off,

we're seeing an S.

- Could it be S for Saba?

[dramatic music]

- Jimmy Gadomski and Mike Barnette

may have finally found the "Saba Bank."

- We know we have an S at the stern.

So that could potentially be "Saba Bank."

- So we're on the stern of the vessel now.

We're actually cleaning the transom off

to reveal the letters of the name of the vessel.

But we have to be careful, because we're trying to remove

the encrustation, but also, we don't want to remove

the letters themselves.

- I have a plastic scraper tool that gets any barnacles

and won't damage the hull...

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And it revealed another letter,

and then another letter.

- Four letters are starting to appear.

- And then we come to a dead end,

because the transom is broken halfway down.

It's kind of like a crossword puzzle now.

We've got to figure out what's missing there.

♪ ♪

- Mike and Jimmy are ready to present their evidence

to historian David O'Keefe.

- I was very careful of what we were moving around,

what we were picking up this time.

- [laughing] Yeah.

- But we did find some really interesting

lettering at the stern.

- Yeah, I can see here.

I mean, the footage is amazing. - Yeah.

As we're cleaning off from left to right,

we're seeing E, an S, and a P,

and then what looks to be an I.

- Now we're certain that we have E-S-P-I.

So we have a big mystery on our hands here.

- Sadly, it's not what they're expecting to see.

- It could be the full name, Espi.

What that means, if it's a nickname,

it could be the owner's wife or significant other, or a child.

We don't really know yet, but it's Espi.

- What about the possibility that this is the "Saba Bank,"

and that maybe it had been used all these years later

under a different name?

- It's very unlikely that this would have been operating

for several decades under the nose of the Coast Guard

and everyone else, going through,

clearing customs, back and forth

between the Bahamas and Miami.

That would have been red flags all over the place.

- And the wreck's dive gear offers further confirmation.

This is not the "Saba Bank."

- We ended up finding a dive tank.

- Wow, look at that. - As divers, we know that

there is markings on dive tanks,

that they need to be visually inspected every year.

- So there's going to be a sticker on there with a stamp.

We can date the wreck based on when

this sticker was last stamped.

- This visual inspection program is done annually

on dive gear, so that helps us basically

narrow down the date range of when

this vessel probably sank.

- We're actually looking right here

at the top of the dive tank, and...

- Gotcha. This came from what year?

- It was punched in the year 2000.

- Ultimately, this is not the "Saba Bank."

- After searching numerous records,

Barnette has found a match.

What they thought was E-S-P-I

is actually E-S-P

followed by the Roman numeral IV.

- The ESP4 was a 55-foot motor yacht

built by Ocean Yachts in 1983.

And local knowledge indicates this vessel, in late 2001,

struck a submerged pipeline off Miami,

ripping her running gear off and causing her

to sink to the bottom.

It was definitely an accident,

because it went down with everything.

We found cameras, we found dive gear, radios.

It wasn't stripped down. It wasn't sunk on purpose.

We do know everyone survived the incident.

- As for the "Saba Bank"...

- In 1974, there were so many hijackings

for drug-related purposes going off in the area

that basically Congress got involved.

- The crew of the "Saba Bank" went into, really,

the heart of darkness.

- This is very much of a human story, to say the least.

- Unfortunately,

if the "Saba Bank" was stolen by pirates,

as now seems likely,

the yacht and her crew may never be found.

♪ ♪

- While we didn't find the "Saba Bank,"

the fact that we initially dove on a mystery wreck,

a complete unknown, to put a name to that,

you know, that's fulfilling.

- The team also learned

how solar storms can render radios useless,

a phenomenon that might play a role

in other Bermuda Triangle disappearances.

♪ ♪

- It's a process.

Gathering data, going to archival information,

comparing that data to what you find in the archives.

Sometimes it takes decades.

That's just the way these mysteries unravel sometimes.

- Dive, dive, dive!

♪ ♪