Awesome or Off-Putting is a weekly delve into cryptozoology, ufology, aliens, medical marvels, scientific wonders, secret societies, government conspiracies, cults, ghosts, EVPs, myths, ancient artifacts, religion, strange facts, odd sightings or just the plain unexplainable.
The SS Ourang Medan was a Dutch cargo ship that sent out a distress call, but by the time help arrived the entire crew were dead with their eyes open, staring ahead with a look of incredible horror on their faces. As she was about to be towed to land the ship exploded, and sank to a watery grave – refusing to give up any answers as to what happened on her salty decks.
The first mention of the SS Ourang Medan and all its suddenly dead crew was in a periodical published by the United States Coast Guard. Allegedly, the ship sent out a distress call, and according to GettysburgGhosts.net, it went something like this:
“”All officers including captain are dead lying in chartroom and bridge.? Possibly whole crew dead.”? This message was followed by indecipherable Morse code then [the words] “I die.””
Help arrived as you can imagine – and only after a few hours. It was too late. Everybody on board was dead. As the rescue party boarded they saw a gruesome sight – the entire crew was at the doorway of decomposition with their eyes open, their arms outstretched, and their lifeless faces twisted in absolute horror. The ship’s dog was dead as well – found with a tooth-filled snarl on its lips.
The Medan itself was completely undamaged, and the sailors had no visible wounds to explain their mass-demise. Before the boat could be explored further flames exploded out of the cargo hold, and the would-be rescuers were forced back to their own vessel. Then the death-ship exploded, and sank out of man’s reach. Had the other ship’s crew not managed to cut the ropes holding the two barges together, perhaps both would have plunged together.
There are several theories as to how all those men died – ranging from the inhalation of carbon monoxide to some kind of nefarious UFO intervention. In the end, nobody really knows what happened.
You know what else nobody knows? If the Ourang Medan ever concretely existed or not. As we already stated, the first mention of the Medan was in a publication put out by the US National Coast Guard. One would think that meant sources were well documented. But perhaps this isn’t the case. Wikipedia seems to think so anyway:
“Several authors note their inability to find any mention of the case in Lloyd’s Shipping Register. Furthermore, no registration records for a ship by the name of Ourang Medan could be located in various countries, including the Netherlands. While Bainton states that the identity of the Silver Star, which was reported to have been involved in the failed rescue attempt, has been established with some certainty, the lack of information on the sunken ship itself has given rise to suspicion about the origins and credibility of the account. Bainton and others have put forward the possibility that accounts of, among others, the date, location, names of the ships involved, and circumstances of the accident might have been inaccurate or exaggerated, or that the story might be completely fictitious.”
So did the ship ever exist? No record of it anywhere would certainly seem to indicate that it didn’t. This point is counter-argued with a barely-post WWII mentality saying that some sort of top secret chemical cargo may have required absolute secrecy – and then triggered all those deaths.
It seems to us an ace scuba team should be able to answer all this once and for all. Let’s see if we can’t put one of those together.
shooty* says
Sounds like Cthulhu to me…
Lord Balto says
Why do you Brits insist on changing the names of US government agencies to fit your own idea of what they should be? It’s the United States Coast Guard, not the US National Coast Guard nor the US Federal Coast Guard nor the US Confederate Coast Guard nor the US Amalgamated Coast Guard–just the US Coast Guard.
megan stapleton says
ooohhh…. sounds creepy. I recon some supernatural force killed them all.
globosapiens says
Long shrouded in mystery!
I remember this story as a young boy reading a cheap paperback account of the mystery of the SS Ourang Medan. We must analyse this story at a comfortable distance and avoid the emotive descriptions of it that evoke paranormal causes. The known facts include but are not limited to the following:
A distress call was sent by the stricken freight ship to which two other ships responded. The distress call ended suddenly. When found, the crew was in a variety of distressed poses staring fixedly. The dog died suddenly on the deck in a strange position. The rescue crew had to leave suddenly because of an explosion which sunk the ship. The ship’s identity is not in any registry. Hard facts and records are hard to come by. The sinking has two dates…strangely…June 1947 and February 1948.
The area the ship was in was the Strait of Malacca in Borneo. The area was a dutch colony in the throes of a colonial war that included the communists against Holland which was a NATO ally. The area had been under Japanese control until 1945.
The Japanese had a long history of Chem-Bio War (CBW) weapons development and had used both chemicals and bio agents against China during the war. A dutch admiralty report gotten with some difficulty over the web shows that particular area suffered mine infestation and heavy military activity in 1948.
Another ship, the MV Soegio, formerly the British transport ministry ship Empire Betsy exploded and sank in the Straits of Macassar in February 1948 at a known location. The ship was leased to a vague Dutch oil company which is untraceable except for its name. Macassar is a name that could easily be confused with many others in the area including Malacca.
Britain was a dutch ally and was faced with colonial struggles of its own after WW2. Communist lead movements allied with independence forces threatened the dying British Empire in 1948. Independence was a Cold War issue in the context of communism.
Possible Conclusions and Open Questions:
Was the MV Soegio in fact the real SS Ourang Medan? The name Ourang Medan is is fact a generic description and likely a fake name. The false identity would serve many purposes: it would hide the bureaucratic paper trail of death claims and goods insurance proceeds from the eyes of the media by shifting attention to a ship that could not be traced.
False cover stories “plausible deniability” is a common practice with the CIA who frequently used the bogus “Atlas Steamship Company” to hide clandestine shipments from media attention and later “Air America.” The small Dutch oil (chemical company?) didn’t seem to be in business very long…why was that? Why two dates for an objective event? A CBW accident would lead to legal proceedings related to illegal CBW warfare against dutch colonials which would be rich fodder for the Soviets.
Has anybody gone to the wreck site? Of course not, since the story is vague enough to deny any specific location information. The wreck of the MV Soegio may be an interesting place as I suggested to “Treasure Quest” who told me that a wreck had to have economic value to offset the cost of a TV show.
What do the records of the MV Soegio show? Were there many British government employees on the ship as “contractors” of the oil company? Have the records of the MV Soegio disappeared as so many others have? Was the explosion that sank the MV Soegio a mine or an emergency charge set to go off in an accident to cover up any illegal CBW weapons? Is there any record or recollection of CBW war in colonial Indonesia?
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