USS Cyclops (AC-4) was one of four Proteus-class colliers built for the United States Navy several years before World War I. Named for the Cyclopes, a primordial race of giants from Greek mythology, she was the second U.S. Naval vessel to bear the name. The loss of the ship and 306 crew and passengers without a trace sometime after 4 March 1918 remains the single largest loss of life in U.S. Naval history not directly involving combat. The ship's fate is still a mystery that remains unsolved to this day. No wreckage of the vessel has ever been found.

Cyclops was launched 7 May 1910, by William Cramp and Sons, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and placed in service 7 November 1910, with Lieutenant Commander George Worley, Master, Naval Auxiliary Service, in charge. Operating with the Naval Auxiliary Service, Atlantic Fleet, she voyaged in the Baltic from May to July 1911 to supply Second Division ships. Returning to Norfolk, Virginia, she operated on the east coast from Newport, Rhode Island, to the Caribbean, servicing the fleet. During the troubled conditions in Mexico in 1914 and 1915, she coaled ships on patrol there and received the thanks of the U.S. State Department for cooperation in bringing refugees from Tampico to New Orleans, Louisiana.

With American entry into World War I, Cyclops was commissioned 1 May 1917, and her skipper, George W. Worley, promoted to Lieutenant Commander. She joined a convoy for Saint-Nazaire, France, in June 1917, returning to the U.S. in July. Except for a voyage to Halifax, Nova Scotia, she served along the east coast until 9 January 1918, when she was assigned to Naval Overseas Transportation Service. She then sailed to Brazilian waters to fuel British ships in the south Atlantic, receiving the thanks of the State Department and CINCPAC.

She put to sea from Rio de Janeiro 16 February 1918. On 20 February, Cyclops entered Bahia. Two days later, she departed for Baltimore, Maryland, with no stops scheduled carrying a load of 10,800 tons of manganese ore, used in the manufacture of munitions. The ship was thought to be overloaded when she left Brazil, as her maximum capacity was 8,000 tons. Before leaving port, Commander Worley had submitted a report that the starboard engine had a cracked cylinder and was not operative, a report confirmed by a survey board, which recommended, however, that repairs be delayed until the ship returned to the United States. She made an unscheduled stop in Barbados on 3 March and 4 March, where Worley called on the United States consul, Brockholst Livingston, and took on additional supplies. Officials in Barbados reported that the water line was over the Plimsoll line, indicating an overloaded condition. Cyclops then set out for Baltimore, and was sighted on 9 March by the molasses tanker Amalco near Virginia, then was never seen or heard from again. Reports indicate that on 10 March, the day after the ship was sighted by the Amalco a violent storm swept through the Virginia Cape area, and suggests that the combination of the overloaded condition, engine trouble, and bad weather may have conspired to do the ship in.

Accusations

At about the time the search for the Cyclops was called off, an alarming telegram was received by the State Department from Brockholst Livingston, the U.S. consul on Barbados:



Investigations by the Office of Naval Intelligence revealed that Captain Worley was born Johan Frederick Wichmann in Sandstadt, Hanover, Germany in 1862, and that he had come to America by jumping ship in San Francisco in 1878. By 1898 he had changed his name to Worley (after a seaman friend), and succeeded in owning and operating a saloon in San Francisco's Barbary Coast. He also got help from brothers whom he had convinced to emigrate. During this time he had qualified to the position of ship's master, and had commanded several civilian merchant ships, picking up and delivering cargo (both legal and illegal; some accounts say opium) from the Far East to San Francisco. Unfortunately, the crews of these ships reported that Worley suffered from a personality allegedly akin to that of HMS Bounty's captain William Bligh; the crew was often brutalized by Worley for trivial things.

Naval investigators discovered information from former crew members about Worley's habits. He would berate and curse officers and men for minor offenses, sometimes getting violent; at one point, he had allegedly chased an ensign about the ship with a pistol. Saner times would find him making his rounds about the ship dressed in long underwear and a derby hat. Worley sometimes would have an inexperienced officer in charge of loading cargo on the ship while the more experienced man was confined to quarters. In Rio de Janeiro, one such man was assigned to oversee the loading of manganese ore, something a collier was not used to carrying, and in this instance the ship was overloaded, which may have contributed to its sinking. The most serious accusation against Worley was that he was pro-German in wartime and may have colluded with the enemy; indeed, his closest friends and associates were either German or Americans of German descent. "Many Germanic names appear" Livingston stated, speculating that the ship had many German sympathizers on board. One of the passengers on the final voyage was Alfred Louis Moreau Gottschalk, the consul-general in Rio de Janeiro, who was as roundly hated for his pro-German sympathies as was Worley. Livingston stated he believed Gottschalk may have been directly involved in collaborating with Worley on handing the ship over to the Germans. After World War I, German records were checked to ascertain the fate of the Cyclops, whether by Worley's hand or by submarine attack. Nothing was found.

Bermuda Triangle connection

The loss of USS Cyclops with all 306 crew and passengers, without a trace, is one of the sea's unsolved mysteries, and is often credited to the Bermuda Triangle. It was the earliest documented incident linked to the Bermuda Triangle involving the disappearance of a U.S. vessel. In his 1975 book The Bermuda Triangle Mystery Solved, author Lawrence Kusche investigated this mystery. He revealed that a diver off Norfolk, Virginia, in 1968, reported finding the wreck of an old ship in about 300 feet of water, stating that the bridge "appeared to be on stilts." He was later shown a picture of the Cyclops (which had that peculiar bridge structure) and was convinced it was the ship he had seen. This would have put the Cyclops, according to Kusche, within 60 miles of the Virginia Capes and into the teeth of a storm that hit the area on 9-10 March 1918 (this storm was reported to have done extensive damage between Indiana and Washington, D.C.). The storm, combined with the unusual cargo of manganese, may have sunk her. However, further expeditions to the reported wreck site failed to find anything.

Most who link the disappearance to the Bermuda Triangle cite the fact that the vessel disappeared having sent out no distress signal. However, ship-board communications were in their infant stages in 1918, and it would not be unusual for a vessel, sinking fast, to have little or no opportunity at a distress call.

Most serious investigators of the incident believe the ship was likely farther to the north of the Bermuda Triangle when it disappeared, but there is little evidence to either substantiate or dispute that. An in depth look at the incident can be found in the book, Great Naval Disasters, by authors Kit and Carolyn Bonner.