Atlas
5th March 2015, 16:45
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/44908464/ghostships/ourangmedan/quote_icon.png I first heard this story as an Ordinary Seaman in the mess room on board an old tramp ship, the MV Port Halifax, whilst crossing the Pacific between Panama and Australia in 1960. Since then I’ve probably carried out more research into this frustrating yarn than anyone else, and I notice that whenever you Google the ship, my name comes up. But although I want to believe it all, (that’s the romantic side of being a writer) the more I dig the more phoney the whole thing begins to look, and I am amazed at the loose, sloppy re-interpretations of my research, tailored to please the credulous hordes who will allow no scepticism to spoil their Halloween spirit.
-Roy Bainton
According to the story, at some point in or around June 1947 (Vincent Gaddis and others list the approximate date as early February 1948), two American vessels navigating the Strait of Malacca, City of Baltimore and Silver Star, among others, picked up distress messages from Dutch merchant ship Ourang Medan. A radio operator aboard the troubled vessel sent the following Morse code message:
S.O.S. from Ourang Medan * * * we float. All officers including the Captain, dead in chartroom and on the bridge. Probably whole of crew dead * * *
A few confused dots and dashes later two words came through clearly:
I die
Then, nothing more.
When Silver Star crew located and boarded the apparently undamaged Ourang Medan in a rescue attempt, the ship was found littered with corpses (including the carcass of a dog) "[s]prawled on their backs, the frozen faces upturned to the sun with mouths gaping open and eyes staring, the dead bodies resembled horrible caricatures", with no survivors and no visible signs of injuries on the dead bodies.
A fire then broke out in the ship's No. 4 cargo hold, forcing the boarding parties to evacuate the Dutch freighter, thus preventing any further investigation. Soon after, Ourang Medan was observed to explode and sink.
The earliest known English reference to the ship and the incident is in the May 1952 issue of the Proceedings of the Merchant Marine Council, published by the United States Coast Guard: (link to original (https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/44908464/ghostships/ourangmedan/pmmc-text-jpg.jpg))
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/44908464/ghostships/ourangmedan/ourang-medan1.jpg
The story features in two seminal books of fortean lore: M K Jessups's The Case For The UFO (1955) and Vincent Gaddis's Invisible Horizons (1965). Most recently it was retold in Damon Wilson's Big Book of The Unexplained (1998). The Borderland Sciences Research website refers to an older source an article by Robert V Hulse in Fate magazine in 1953.
The story's first appearance was a series of three articles in the Dutch-Indonesian newspaper De locomotief: Samarangsch handels- en advertentie-blad
February 3, 1948: (link to original (https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/44908464/ghostships/ourangmedan/news1.jpg))
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/44908464/ghostships/ourangmedan/news1.gif
Although the story is mostly the same as the later versions, there are significant differences. The name of the ship that found the Ourang Medan is never mentioned, but the location of the encounter is described as 400 nautical miles south-east of the Marshall Islands.
February 28, 1948: (link to original (https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/44908464/ghostships/ourangmedan/news2.jpg))
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/44908464/ghostships/ourangmedan/news2.gif
The second and third article describe the experiences of the sole survivor of the Ourang Medan crew, who was found by a missionary and natives on Toangi (sic) atoll in the Marshall islands. The man, before perishing, tells the missionary that the ship was carrying a badly stowed cargo of sulphuric acid, and that most of the crew perished because of the poisonous fumes escaping from broken containers.
March 13, 1948: (link to original (https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/44908464/ghostships/ourangmedan/news3.jpg))
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/44908464/ghostships/ourangmedan/news3.gif
According to the story, the Ourang Medan was sailing from an unnamed small Chinese port to Costa Rica, and deliberately avoiding the authorities. The survivor, an unnamed German, died after telling his story to the missionary, who told the story to the author, Silvio Scherli of Trieste, Italy. The Dutch newspaper concludes with a disclaimer:
This is the last part of our story about the mystery of the Ourang Medan. We must repeat that we don't have any other data on this "mystery of the sea". Nor can we answer the many unanswered questions in the story. It may seem obvious that this is a thrilling romance of the sea. On the other hand, the author, Silvio Scherli, assures us of the authenticity of the story.
Bainton and others hypothesize that Ourang Medan might have been involved in smuggling operations of chemical substances such as a combination of potassium cyanide and nitroglycerin or even wartime stocks of nerve agents. According to these theories, sea water would have entered the ship's hold, reacting with the cargo to release toxic gases, which then caused the crew to succumb to asphyxia and/or poisoning. Later, the sea water would have reacted with the nitroglycerin, causing the reported fire and explosion.
Another theory is that the ship was transporting nerve gas which the Japanese military had been storing in China during the war, this was handed over to the U.S. military at the end of the war. No U.S. ship could transport it as it would leave a paper trail. It was therefore loaded onto a non registered ship for transport to the U.S. or Island in the pacific.
Gaddis puts forward the theory that an undetected smoldering fire or malfunction in the ship's boiler system might have been responsible for the shipwreck. Escaping carbon monoxide would have caused the deaths of all aboard, with the fire slowly getting out of control, leading to the vessel's ultimate destruction.
Some theorised that clouds of noxious natural gases bubbled up from fissures in the seabed and engulfed the ship, and others have even blamed the occurrence on the supernatural, but to this day, the exact fate of the ships crew remains a mystery.
(Sources: wikipedia.org/Ourang_Medan (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ourang_Medan) - shortoncontent.wordpress.com/the-ss-ourang-medan-death-ship-updated (https://shortoncontent.wordpress.com/2015/01/15/the-ss-ourang-medan-death-ship-updated/))
-Roy Bainton
According to the story, at some point in or around June 1947 (Vincent Gaddis and others list the approximate date as early February 1948), two American vessels navigating the Strait of Malacca, City of Baltimore and Silver Star, among others, picked up distress messages from Dutch merchant ship Ourang Medan. A radio operator aboard the troubled vessel sent the following Morse code message:
S.O.S. from Ourang Medan * * * we float. All officers including the Captain, dead in chartroom and on the bridge. Probably whole of crew dead * * *
A few confused dots and dashes later two words came through clearly:
I die
Then, nothing more.
When Silver Star crew located and boarded the apparently undamaged Ourang Medan in a rescue attempt, the ship was found littered with corpses (including the carcass of a dog) "[s]prawled on their backs, the frozen faces upturned to the sun with mouths gaping open and eyes staring, the dead bodies resembled horrible caricatures", with no survivors and no visible signs of injuries on the dead bodies.
A fire then broke out in the ship's No. 4 cargo hold, forcing the boarding parties to evacuate the Dutch freighter, thus preventing any further investigation. Soon after, Ourang Medan was observed to explode and sink.
The earliest known English reference to the ship and the incident is in the May 1952 issue of the Proceedings of the Merchant Marine Council, published by the United States Coast Guard: (link to original (https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/44908464/ghostships/ourangmedan/pmmc-text-jpg.jpg))
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/44908464/ghostships/ourangmedan/ourang-medan1.jpg
The story features in two seminal books of fortean lore: M K Jessups's The Case For The UFO (1955) and Vincent Gaddis's Invisible Horizons (1965). Most recently it was retold in Damon Wilson's Big Book of The Unexplained (1998). The Borderland Sciences Research website refers to an older source an article by Robert V Hulse in Fate magazine in 1953.
The story's first appearance was a series of three articles in the Dutch-Indonesian newspaper De locomotief: Samarangsch handels- en advertentie-blad
February 3, 1948: (link to original (https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/44908464/ghostships/ourangmedan/news1.jpg))
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/44908464/ghostships/ourangmedan/news1.gif
Although the story is mostly the same as the later versions, there are significant differences. The name of the ship that found the Ourang Medan is never mentioned, but the location of the encounter is described as 400 nautical miles south-east of the Marshall Islands.
February 28, 1948: (link to original (https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/44908464/ghostships/ourangmedan/news2.jpg))
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/44908464/ghostships/ourangmedan/news2.gif
The second and third article describe the experiences of the sole survivor of the Ourang Medan crew, who was found by a missionary and natives on Toangi (sic) atoll in the Marshall islands. The man, before perishing, tells the missionary that the ship was carrying a badly stowed cargo of sulphuric acid, and that most of the crew perished because of the poisonous fumes escaping from broken containers.
March 13, 1948: (link to original (https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/44908464/ghostships/ourangmedan/news3.jpg))
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/44908464/ghostships/ourangmedan/news3.gif
According to the story, the Ourang Medan was sailing from an unnamed small Chinese port to Costa Rica, and deliberately avoiding the authorities. The survivor, an unnamed German, died after telling his story to the missionary, who told the story to the author, Silvio Scherli of Trieste, Italy. The Dutch newspaper concludes with a disclaimer:
This is the last part of our story about the mystery of the Ourang Medan. We must repeat that we don't have any other data on this "mystery of the sea". Nor can we answer the many unanswered questions in the story. It may seem obvious that this is a thrilling romance of the sea. On the other hand, the author, Silvio Scherli, assures us of the authenticity of the story.
Bainton and others hypothesize that Ourang Medan might have been involved in smuggling operations of chemical substances such as a combination of potassium cyanide and nitroglycerin or even wartime stocks of nerve agents. According to these theories, sea water would have entered the ship's hold, reacting with the cargo to release toxic gases, which then caused the crew to succumb to asphyxia and/or poisoning. Later, the sea water would have reacted with the nitroglycerin, causing the reported fire and explosion.
Another theory is that the ship was transporting nerve gas which the Japanese military had been storing in China during the war, this was handed over to the U.S. military at the end of the war. No U.S. ship could transport it as it would leave a paper trail. It was therefore loaded onto a non registered ship for transport to the U.S. or Island in the pacific.
Gaddis puts forward the theory that an undetected smoldering fire or malfunction in the ship's boiler system might have been responsible for the shipwreck. Escaping carbon monoxide would have caused the deaths of all aboard, with the fire slowly getting out of control, leading to the vessel's ultimate destruction.
Some theorised that clouds of noxious natural gases bubbled up from fissures in the seabed and engulfed the ship, and others have even blamed the occurrence on the supernatural, but to this day, the exact fate of the ships crew remains a mystery.
(Sources: wikipedia.org/Ourang_Medan (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ourang_Medan) - shortoncontent.wordpress.com/the-ss-ourang-medan-death-ship-updated (https://shortoncontent.wordpress.com/2015/01/15/the-ss-ourang-medan-death-ship-updated/))