Death Ship: Ourang Medan

There are some stories that have been bandied about for so many years that everyone assumes by now that they are tall tales or urban legends. More than one version exists, things can’t be proven and the details just seem too strange to be real. And yet the legend persists. Could there be something true after all, hiding under a cloak of improbability? Let’s see if we can lift said cloak and have a little peek underneath to see what else might be lurking around in the story of the “death ship” — the Ourang Medan.

The Mystery

The problem with this tale is that the details are not concrete. Some sources say it happened in one year, others in another, etc. But let’s gloss over all that for now. We’ll come back to it, I promise, but first let me spin you a yarn about a spooky ship and its unfortunate crew.

Sometime in the 1940s, ships sailing the trading route of the Strait of Malacca received a distress call from a vessel in trouble. The Morse code message was picked up by several ships in the area, including two American ones. The message they received was from a ship identifying itself as the S.S. Ourang Medan, a Dutch cargo ship.

The message said: “We float. All officers including captain dead, lying in chartroom and on the bridge, probably whole crew dead.” More apparent Morse code followed but didn’t make any sense until at the very end when the last transmission received from the only remaining sailor was: “I die.” After that, nothing more was heard.

The nearest ship to the Ourang Medan was the American vessel, the S.S. Silver Star and it duly set off to see if it could provide aid. Once it reached the Ourang Medan, the crew saw a silent ship, undamaged, just floating on the waves with not a soul to be seen. Once they got closer and boarded the boat, however, they soon realised it was a different story.

As the radio operator had said, the whole crew was dead. Men lay on the deck in death rictuses, staring at the sky, all with looks of horror or fear on their faces. The captain and his officers were found in other areas of the Ourang Medan, all dead. The radio operator was found at his post, also with fear frozen on his face.

Even the ship’s dog had fallen victim to whatever had taken place and was now snarling eternally into the void.

After also noticing that at least one lifeboat was missing from the Ourang Medan, the crew from the Silver Star decided to tow it back to land. As they were setting off, however, some men noticed smoke rising from the stricken ship. They hastily cut the line as the Ourang Medan exploded into a fireball and sank down to the bottom of the sea, taking its poor crew, their dog and its secrets down with it.

So — did this actually happen, did the boat exist or is it just a maritime ghost story made up to spook new naval recruits on a cold winters’ night? I know which way Simon’s going to be leaning but let’s see if we can pull any plausibility out of this story before completely ripping it to shreds.

The Case For the Death Ship

OK, so we know that the precise details are a little sketchy surrounding the incident of the Ourang Medan but that doesn’t necessarily mean it didn’t happen. It may be that because the details got confused over the years, people were just looking in the wrong place. One of the most compelling points for the existence of the death ship is its appearance in several official reports over the years from pretty impressive sources.

The earliest mentions of the Ourang Medan seem to crop up in the British press in November 1940. The Yorkshire Evening Post and the Daily Mirror both published an apparent eyewitness account of the incident under the headlines of “Mystery SOS from Death Ship” and “Crew Dies in SOS Mystery”. In this earlier version of the story, the rescue ship is not named and an extra distress message is intercepted first, requesting a doctor, but the essence of the story is the same.

A French publication called Sept-Jours ran a story on the death ship in September 1941 with the headline translating as “After Twenty Months, the Mystery of the Ourang Medan Is Solved”. In this article, the Ourang Medan is cast as a convict transport ship later sold to a smuggler. The story of the mystery incident comes to light via an ex sailor on the Ourang Medan and involves the ship carrying an unknown cargo and abruptly changing course after a few days at sea. After an initial sailor’s death was shrugged off as a heart attack, more men started keeling over and eventually two lifeboats left the ship, with only one man ever making it back to land. When telling his story later, this ex-crew member was able to confirm exactly what the ship was carrying. According to this article, it was nitroglycerine, potassium cyanide, and sulfuric acid. What a great mix. I bet they took extra care and attention in storing all these highly dangerous substances. Oh, they didn’t and they mixed to form a deadly gas cloud and then the nitroglycerine took the whole thing down? Zoicks.

In 1948, it popped up again in Dutch-Indonesian newspaper, De locomotief. This story is also that of a survivor of the Ourang Medan; a sailor who managed to escape in the lifeboat and got washed up on an island. Before dying from the bad condition he was found in, he told the story to a missionary who then told a writer who then related it to the wider world.

In the Proceedings of the Merchant Marine Council, volume 9, published in 1952 by none other than the United States Coast Guard, they make mention of the incident which they peg as having happened in 1948. They relate the Morse code message, the location of the Straits of Malacca and that when the rescue ship arrived, which is unnamed in their article, everyone was dead. The publication describes the scene like this:

There were dead men everywhere. Bodies were strewn about the decks, in the passageways, in the charthouse, on the bridge. Sprawled on their backs, the frozen faces upturned to the sun with mouth gaping open and eyes staring, the dead bodies resembled horrible caricatures. Even the ship’s dog was found dead.

Yet the bodies seemed to bear no sign of injury or wounds. Then, when a fire was discovered in No. 4 hold, she had to be abandoned. A few minutes later an explosion followed and the Ourang Medan sank. To this day no explanation has been offered as to what might have happened to the unfortunate ship’s company.

This appeared in a feature called “We Sail Together” which mentions several other strange instances of ships being abandoned in mysterious circumstances or being sighted after having been declared wrecked. The article goes on to talk about the Titanic and improvements in safety legislation so it’s presenting all the mystery cases as things that actually happened, not as rumours or ghost stories.

In 1954, a German writer called Otto Mielke published a booklet translated as “Death Ship in the South Sea”. This also placed the incident as having happened in 1947 and confirmed the cargo as the dangerous combo of potassium cyanide and nitroglycerin. Mielke also gave specific details about the route the Ourang Medan was supposedly taking. The Silver Star was name-checked along with its captain, with these extra details giving an air of authenticity to the whole story.

So there we go, the Ourang Medan exists in the historical record, albeit somewhat nebulously. Does this mean it is a true tale after all? Well, not really. This scant information alone is not enough to convince most people, and there are some who have been looking into this story for years, so let’s add a few more strands to the case.

One of the main issues surrounding the belief that the Ourang Medan story is false, is that nobody has ever found a ship called the Ourang Medan listed anywhere. There’s no record of it in the Lloyd’s Register of Ships which is the authority in listing all seagoing merchant vessels. There are possibly ways to explain this, though. The first is that the ship could have been registered elsewhere or didn’t meet the size requirements necessary to register it with Lloyd’s.

If you’re familiar with the Malay language, or even if you’re not, you may have known that the orange ape we call an “Orangutan” means “man” or “person of the forest”. In the same way, the name “Ourang Medan” means “Person from Medan” or “Man From Medan” which is a city in the North Sumatran province of Indonesia. It’s quite possible that the ship was registered in Sumatra or just not at all.

It’s also possible that the ship was officially registered somewhere and then changed its name for some reason during its final journey. Why might it change its name mid-voyage? This is where the story gets interesting.

All the various versions of the tale conclude with the Ourang Medan catching fire or exploding and sinking without a trace. What could cause this to happen? There’s one line of thought that goes like this: The Ourang Medan was originally named something else and changed its name to avoid detection while carrying out the illegal and highly dangerous task of transporting deadly chemicals such as nitroglycerine and potassium cyanide.

The purported survivor that washed up on the island told the missionary the ship was carrying sulphuric acid. Let’s say it was carrying dangerous and / or volatile chemicals. If something happened and fumes or gases escaped, this might account for the horrible deaths the crew suffered.

It could also have led to the explosion or fire that ended up sinking the ship.

If the incident happened around 1940, the Second World War had already kicked off, meaning that it’s not too far outside the realms of possibility that a merchant ship was disguised and used to transport chemicals to create weapons or for other nasty uses. Who was using the ship, where they had come from and where they were going is unknown but if it’s true, at least that particular load didn’t reach its destination.

If we’re talking gases and fumes, there’s also the less exciting theory that the boiler was faulty and carbon monoxide spread silently throughout the ship, ultimately suffocating the crew and the poor little dog.

So, really, there could be a half decent case here. All the elements may not have gone down exactly as the legend says but there may well have been a ship with a fake name hauling a cargo of dangerous chemicals that got into trouble somewhere. The entire crew may have perished or maybe some survived but as it was an undercover operation, they couldn’t really talk about it.

Or maybe they had no idea what was really in the hold so couldn’t explain it themselves. The boat may well have exploded or at least caught fire and sank without anyone really getting to the bottom of it. It’s the extra details like the entire crew looking like they all died of fright that turn this into an enduring story.

Could a gas leak have caused this kind of situation? I don’t know enough about how toxic gases spread to be able to say whether this is credible or not but maybe a large amount on a smallish ship would be enough to take everyone out. The weather was supposedly calm enough to allow the rescue boat to board the Ourang Medan so maybe that also kept the gas from being dispersed too much.

Pirates or some other form of human attack seems unlikely as the newspapers reported the bodies as not having injuries and the boat was not damaged. Would another ship sail up, gas the crew, steal something the boat was smuggling and row off into the sunset? Well, the best we can say about that, is that it’s a theory.

Maybe outside forces were to blame. A Mr. C.H. Marck Jr certainly thought so and even troubled the CIA with his beliefs.

In a letter from the CIA archives that was declassified in 2003, the letter from Mr. Marck, sent in December 1959 is actually a follow-up from a letter he sent in 1958 concerning other mysterious maritime disappearances. Apparently he’d just found out about the Ourang Medan story so was eager to share his views. These include the theory that the Ourang Medan case might unlock a whole slew of other mysteries, were it to be solved.

He wrote:

Also, I have often thought about the many sightings of huge fiery spheres rising from the ‘sea’, or disappearing into the ‘sea’, by ships captains and crews in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

I don’t know why he put quotation marks around “sea” as surely that’s the one element of the mystery that everyone can agree on actually exists. Are there sea deniers? He goes on to mention a few more instances of things burning in the sky or spontaneously catching fire but they’re all over the place time and location-wise and don’t really seem to have anything to do with the Ourang Medan story. It’s not even clear if he’s talking about a possible extraterrestrial answer to the mystery.

Could a UFO have blasted the Ourang Medan with some kind of ray, instantly killing all on board? Mr. Marck isn’t so explicit in his letter. He finishes by saying:

Yes, the enchanting sea, what terrifying ‘secret’ does it hold? I feel sure the S.S. Ourang Medan tragedy also holds the answer to this ‘secret’.

Again with the inappropriate quotation marks. It sounds like Mr. Marck knows a lot more than he’s letting on but is not giving us enough hints to know what he’s going on about. I’m sure the CIA were very interested to read this letter but probably put it in the pile marked “Kooks”. It’s also the tipping point of this piece from the vaguely credible into the incredible. Let’s move on to the case against the Ourang Medan story.

The Case Against the Death Ship

Really, where to begin? Let’s start with when this was supposed to have taken place. There are various dates in play with most sources, which probably just got their information from each other, saying 1947 or 1948. How does this then explain the mentions of the ship by name in 1940 in the British papers where they stated the sinking had happened in November of 1939?

If the story seems unlikely to begin with, it’s even more unlikely that the exact same thing happened twice to two unregistered ships, both with the name Ourang Medan. If it had, there definitely would have been more column inches about it.

And what about the other ships in the story? In later versions, the S.S. Silver Star is named as the rescue boat but this couldn’t have been the case as while this boat did exist, it changed its name several times over the course of its life and was only called the Silver Star in 1946 which is one of the few years that this story is not rumoured to have taken place in.

This directly contradicts the story that mentions the Silver Star in the German booklet, for example. Also, while the Silver Star was a real ship with a real history, there is nothing in any of its reports about this incident which should at least have garnered a passing mention somewhere along the line. In the earlier 1940 articles, no name for the rescue ship is given at all which seems a bit suspicious given that they would be the eyewitnesses to the whole event.

Also, literally where on Earth did this event take place? I mentioned the Strait of Malacca in the story at the start of this piece. This is a busy but narrow shipping channel linking India to China. As the city of Medan is on its route, that’s probably why the ship named “Man from Medan” has frequently been placed there. This makes sense but it’s wildly at odds with the earlier newspaper reports. The Yorkshire Evening Post states that the Ourang Medan was found near the Solomon Islands, over 4,000 miles (nearly 7000 km) away from the Strait of Malacca. The Dutch-Indonesian newspaper, De locomotief, put the event as happening near the Marshall Islands, over 1300 miles (over 2000 km) from the Solomon Islands and almost 5000 miles (8000 km) from the Strait of Malacca so what are we supposed to make of that?

Apart from the lack of detail, the varying dates and locations, what other bits of the mystery can we dunk on? What stands out to me is the radio message. It has been most popularly reported as “All officers including captain dead, lying in chartroom and on the bridge, probably whole crew dead.” Was this all tapped out in Morse code?

If so, if the entire ship’s crew is falling down dead all around, wouldn’t you want to just type SOS multiple times? “All are dead” would also get the message across a bit more succinctly than bothering to take the time to note the locations where the officers are lying.

And what of this rescue boat? Apart from the Silver Star being seemingly erroneously linked as the rescue vessel, there are other issues surrounding whatever ship may or may not have heeded the distress call. They wouldn’t have known what had happened to the crew before boarding but then seeing them all dead in the same way might have made them guess that some sort of gas was involved.

If so, would there still be some lingering around? The rescue crew were never reported as having felt any ill effects and seeing as we have no idea where this took place, we also have no idea how long it took them to reach the stricken Ourang Medan. They seem to have arrived in the extremely lucky pocket between the crew all dying but the gasses clearing and then managed to leave before the ship blew up.

If the Ourang Medan blew up because of some gas or chemical leak, that would mean there was still enough present to cause the explosion so wouldn’t the rescuers also have been affected when they went aboard? The whole mystery really hinges on the rescuing crew boarding the boat and seeing the dead men, otherwise it would just be a ship sending out a distress call and then sinking. But as no-one from the Silver Star has ever been proven to have come forward, this whole thing has had to rely on anonymous or several-steps-removed sources.

Speaking of, what about that survivor found by the missionary? According to the series of articles from the De locomotief publication, the survivor from the Ourang Medan ended up landing at the Taongi Atoll somewhere in the Marshall Islands and was tended to by this missionary before succumbing to his condition, be it from inhaling poisonous gas or just being adrift at sea for a while. The only problem with that is that the atoll is a tiny, uninhabited place so there’s no way a missionary would be there for any reason much less would stay there to care for and take the dying man’s last telling of the events.

While we’re on the subject of sources, let’s delve into it as it seems that if ever there was a common thread to where this story might have originated, this is probably it. In The Yorkshire Evening Post article, it starts by saying “an eye-witness account of the last phase of a mysterious sea tragedy has been brought to Trieste by a merchant marine officer who went to the rescue of the steamer Ourang Medan off the Solomon Islands last November”. Trieste, eh? Remember that now.

The paper De Locomotief actually published a series of 3 articles about the Ourang Medan in 1948. Their source for the information was the survivor of the poison gas on the ship who then told the story to a missionary who then told the story to one Silvio Scherli who is named as having told the paper. Is it a coincidence that in 1940, Scherli was based in Trieste, the time and city of the source for the British articles? Really, really doubtful. And this isn’t the only time he pops up in connection with the story. Obviously not content with the low level of publicity his story seeds had thus far yielded, Scherli wrote another article about the Ourang Medan in 1959 for the Export Trade magazine based in Trieste. And recently an additional version was discovered from October 1940 making it the earliest printed version of the story to date. It appeared in the Italian paper Il Piccolo and was written by someone by the name of Silvio Scherli. The exact same story then later appeared in the Sept-Jours article of 1941. Was this Scherli just trying to create his own piece of urban legend by sporadically mentioning this weird story to get it in the public record? Very possibly, yes. Why? Who knows but if that was his intention he kind of succeeded as it was only people determined to pick the story apart that found a connection with him at all.

While it does seem that just one man was hell-bent on getting this story into the history books, it’s also probable that ships were transporting illegal cargo and did go down on numerous occasions around the period of the Second World War. Maybe Scherli was trying to point people to some sort of wider cover up but as the details changed so much over the years, the story just fell apart as any sort of credible event.

Even to this day, the short, strange tale of the Ourang Medan lives on. In 2019, Supermassive Games developed a video game called “Man of Medan” as the first installment of their “Dark Pictures Anthology” series. The game is set on board a ghost ship where chemicals that cause hallucinations are a major plot point. The name of the ship, which players can choose whether to disclose or not, is the Ourang Medan.

I have to say that I’m definitely leaning hard towards the “totally made up” side of this story. While it would be pretty awesome if a secret undercover operation went spectacularly wrong, apart from the “everyone dying” bit, obviously, the disparity in the most basic of details means that we’re looking at a fabrication. It is both a bit weird and a bit cool that Silvio Scherli put so much effort into inserting this almost certainly fictional ship into the historical narrative.

He definitely seems to have pulled the wool over the eyes of news editors in several countries so hats off to him, although he probably annoyed the hell out of any friends and family he let in on his plot to start an urban legend. Silvio, you’re like a dog with a bone about this thing. Stop trying to make the Ourang Medan happen!

We now live in a time where digitized archives holding decades of information can be searched in minutes and global distances can be mapped and measured from the comfort of your own home. To try and plant a similar story into the public consciousness nowadays is a much harder proposition although, as we know, humans don’t always seem to let facts get in the way of a good story.

Frequently Asked Questions

What was the content of the distress call sent by the S.S. Ourang Medan?

The Morse code message said: ‘We float. All officers including captain dead, lying in chartroom and on the bridge, probably whole crew dead.’ More apparent Morse code followed but didn’t make any sense until at the very end when the last transmission received from the only remaining sailor was: ‘I die.‘

What did the rescue crew from the Silver Star find when they boarded the Ourang Medan?

The crew saw a silent ship, undamaged, just floating on the waves. Once they boarded, they found the whole crew was dead. Men lay on the deck in death rictuses, staring at the sky, all with looks of horror or fear on their faces. The captain and his officers were found in other areas, all dead. The radio operator was found at his post, also with fear frozen on his face. Even the ship’s dog had fallen victim and was now snarling eternally into the void.

What happened to the Ourang Medan after the rescue crew attempted to tow it?

As they were setting off to tow it back to land, some men noticed smoke rising from the stricken ship. They hastily cut the line as the Ourang Medan exploded into a fireball and sank down to the bottom of the sea.

What are the earliest known mentions of the Ourang Medan in the press?

The earliest mentions seem to crop up in the British press in November 1940. The Yorkshire Evening Post and the Daily Mirror both published an apparent eyewitness account of the incident under the headlines of ‘Mystery SOS from Death Ship’ and ‘Crew Dies in SOS Mystery’.

What dangerous cargo was the Ourang Medan supposedly carrying according to some accounts?

According to a 1941 French publication Sept-Jours and a 1954 German booklet by Otto Mielke, the ship was carrying nitroglycerine, potassium cyanide, and sulfuric acid. The article suggested these substances mixed to form a deadly gas cloud, and the nitroglycerine caused the explosion.

What evidence exists from official sources about the Ourang Medan incident?

In 1952, the United States Coast Guard published a mention of the incident in the Proceedings of the Merchant Marine Council, volume 9, which they peg as having happened in 1948. They related the Morse code message, the location of the Straits of Malacca, and described the scene of dead bodies with no sign of injury or wounds, the ship’s dog being found dead, a fire in No. 4 hold, and an explosion that sank the ship.

Why might there be no record of the Ourang Medan in Lloyd’s Register of Ships?

Possible explanations include that the ship could have been registered elsewhere or didn’t meet the size requirements necessary to register with Lloyd’s. The name ‘Ourang Medan’ means ‘Person from Medan’ or ‘Man From Medan,’ so it’s possible the ship was registered in Sumatra or not at all. It’s also possible the ship was officially registered somewhere and then changed its name during its final journey, possibly to avoid detection while illegally transporting deadly chemicals.

What problems exist with the S.S. Silver Star being identified as the rescue ship?

While the Silver Star did exist, it changed its name several times over the course of its life and was only called the Silver Star in 1946, which is one of the few years that this story is not rumoured to have taken place in. This directly contradicts the story that mentions the Silver Star in the German booklet. Additionally, there is nothing in any of the Silver Star’s reports about this incident, which should have garnered at least a passing mention.

What inconsistencies exist regarding where the Ourang Medan incident took place?

The location varies wildly between sources. The Strait of Malacca is frequently mentioned, but the Yorkshire Evening Post states the Ourang Medan was found near the Solomon Islands, over 4,000 miles away from the Strait of Malacca. The Dutch-Indonesian newspaper De locomotief put the event as happening near the Marshall Islands, over 1,300 miles from the Solomon Islands and almost 5,000 miles from the Strait of Malacca.

Who appears to be the common source behind many of the Ourang Medan stories?

Silvio Scherli appears to be the common thread. He was based in Trieste in 1940, the city and time of the source for the British articles. De Locomotief’s 1948 series cited Scherli as having told the paper the story from a missionary. Scherli wrote another article about the Ourang Medan in 1959 for Export Trade magazine based in Trieste.

The earliest printed version from October 1940 appeared in the Italian paper Il Piccolo and was written by Silvio Scherli. The same story later appeared in the Sept-Jours article of 1941.

Sources

• Original Decoding the Unknown video: Death Ship: Ourang Medan
• Hero image source by Brandon Zhang / openverse, cc0.