Dozens of filmmakers have tackled the story of the Bermuda Triangle over the years, but for journalist Matt Smith the legend is a personal one.

Mr Smith, right, grew up being told that his grandparents — who were passengers on the ill-fated passenger plane Star Tiger — had disappeared in the Triangle.

“It’s always been a mystery in my family,” he told The Royal Gazette. “I grew up knowing that my grandparents weren’t around. That they disappeared. We never knew, as a family, any more than that really.

“As a journalist who worked with the BBC and Sky, I wanted to find out a bit more about it. I wanted to dig around and get information.” That search spawned the Tech TV documentary Bermuda Triangle: The Missing Family, filmed largely on the island.

Mr Smith, who is British, said his mother was just six months old when her parents set out for the island on board the Star Tiger, an Avro Tudor IV passenger aircraft owned and operated by British South American Airways. The flight left the Azores for Bermuda on January 29, 1948, but never arrived.

The disappearance sparked a five-day search, but no signs of the Star Tiger or the plane’s 31 passengers have ever been discovered. The incident is one of several linked to the supposed Bermuda Triangle.

“There was never any trace found,” Mr Smith said. “They did a search and they never found even a suitcase or an oil slick. This was after the war, and none of our family asked questions.

“We are trying to get to the mystery of how a plane could disappear and nothing found.”

He came to the island with a film crew last May, speaking to a number of local figures and tracking down documents in an effort to learn more about what happened.

While he said some locals seemed a bit wary about the topic of the film, they were relieved to discover that he was taking a journalistic, scientific approach to the subject rather than something supernatural.

“It’s not a crackpot Bermuda Triangle supernatural nonsense mystery,” he said. “We wanted to look at the evidence, look at the logical explanations.”

Mr Smith said that one indication was that his grandparents — who were wine distributors — likely came to the island to discuss importing Gosling’s rum to the UK.

During a search of the Bermuda archives, he said they also found “strongly worded” communications between the Governor of Bermuda at the British Foreign Office over the safety of flights between the Azores and Bermuda.

“It was a very dangerous flight,” Mr Smith said. “They were flying with barely enough gas in the tank to make it, navigating by the stars. They were really flying blind.”

He said he was also able to speak with David Saul, a former premier and partial owner of Odyssey Marine Exploration, about using modern technology to find remnants of the missing aircraft.

Mr Smith said Tech TV had signed a worldwide sales deal with Espresso TV, who sell documentaries internationally, and that company has taken it to the International Market of Communications Programmes in Cannes to market it.