Ourang Medan
On an indeterminate day in June, 1947 a strange May Day broadcast lit up the radios of several large ships sailing on the Strait of Malacca. The ship issuing the May Day was the S.S. Ourang Medan, a dutch ship. The S.S. Silver Star, among other ships, copied down the message sent in Morse Code: “All officers including captain are dead lying in chartroom and bridge. Possibly whole crew dead."
Several more seemingly garbled messages came in that were not able to be decoded. But the final message came in quite clearly - “I die.”
Working fast to respond to the May Day, Dutch and British listening posts were able to work together to triangulate the present location of the S.S. Ourang Medan. The S.S. Silver Star, who had copied down several of the messages, were deemed the closest and they were ordered to answer the S.S. Ourang Medan’s call for help. The crew of the S.S. Silver Star, an Australian ship, made their way towards the S.S. Ourang Medan.
They were able to locate the S.S. Ourang Medan but found the ship to be eerily quiet, considering they had recently sent out a May Day. A rescue party in small boats approached the vessel and found it to be undamaged and seemingly in good working order.
However, upon boarding the ship it appeared that its outward appearance was very misleading. The rescue party embarked on the ship to find the entire crew dead, including the dog.The cause of death seemed unknown, as there were not any major injuries nor was there a lot of blood. However, every single crew member had their eyes opened and their faces twisted in agony. Some reports also add that several had the corpses with their arms extended or pointing towards the sky, seeming to attempt to fend something off.
According to a May 1952 report of the Proceedings of the Merchant Marine Council, several years after the event, wrote: “their frozen faces were upturned to the sun, the mouths were gaping open and the eyes staring…” The captain remains were on the bridge, the officers were in the wardrooms the radio operator was still in the communications room, his now cold hand still on the Morse Code transmitter. It appears all hands have perished at their work stations. During the search the crew notes an unnatural chill in the cargo holds. This is written off in the moment as the outside temps reach 110 degrees, so any shade must feel cooler.”
Horrified, and likely scared for their own fates, the rescue team worked as quickly as they could to try to prepare the S.S. Ourang Medan to be towed into shore by S.S. Silver Star. However, once they began to establish the tow line, flames erupted from a cargo hold and quickly engulfed the cargo decks. Then, almost inexplicably fast, the S.S. Ourang Medan blew up. According to the report the explosion was so powerful that the S.S. Ourang Medan “lifted herself from the water and swiftly sank.”
Theories run the gamut, from the S.S. Ourang Medan simply being a strange, urban legend of a ghost ship all the way to conspiracy theories like it was carrying a top secret chemical weapon (which explains why the incident was not reported on until years later). Which, perhaps if it is the latter, explains why the men died so suddenly and so strangely - had the chemical they were transporting somehow been exposed to them?
The above image is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license, taken by XEON.
