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In June of 1947, a distress signal in the Strait of Malacca came from the Dutch Merchant Ship, the SS Ourang Medan. The Morse code message went as follows: “…we float. All officers including the Captain, dead in chartroom and on the bridge. Probably whole crew dead…” Following a confused series of dots and dashes, two chilling words were understood, “I die.” There was nothing more. No more communications with the doomed ship.

View large Uncategorized SS Ourang Medan SS Ourang Medan Continuing with mysteries that have influenced my writings, today we discover that the sea can hold more secrets than we can imagine. Join along as we look at the events of a ghost ship that still baffles historians and nautical investigators to this day: In June of 1947, a distress signal in the Strait of Malacca came from the Dutch Merchant Ship, the SS Ourang Medan. The Morse code message went as follows: “…we float. All officers including the Captain, dead in chartroom and on the bridge. Probably whole crew dead…” Following a confused series of dots and dashes, two chilling words were understood, “I die.” There was nothing more. No more communications with the doomed ship. The unsettling, cryptic distress call was picked up by two American ships, the Silver Star and the City of Baltimore, along with Dutch and British listening posts. The listeners quickly triangulated the broadcast and narrowed down the likely location. The Silver Star, being the closest ship, was dispatched, changing her course to locate the distressed ship. After a search of the area, the Silver Star located the seemingly undamaged SS Ourang Medan, which was bobbing in and out of sight on the choppy waters of the Malaccan Strait. When the crew boarded the ship, they were not prepared for the living horror story they were about to enter: the deck of the ship was littered with rapidly deteriorating corpses. Even the corpse of a dog was found. The condition in which the bodies were found were even more disturbing, all sprawled on their backs, faces frozen with a look of terror, mouths open wide, gaping, and eyes staring. All the bodies had their arms outstretched in front of them. One crewmember of the Silver Star described the dead bodies as resembling horrible caricatures. An extensive search of the ship was to be conducted, as there was no signs of survivors anywhere, but as the Silver Star’s crew was beginning to organize the search effort, a fire broke out in the ship’s Number 4 cargo hold, forcing the boarding party to evacuate the ship. The fire quickly spread, igniting something highly combustible in the hold, causing a massive explosion which sank the SS Ourang Medan before a formal and extensive investigation could be completed. There are as many theories as to what happened to the SS Ourang Medan as there are unanswered questions about the case. The main question of what happened opens the door to a plethora of other questions, who sent the signal if everyone was already dead or dying instead of trying to get off the ship? Why was everyone frozen with a look of fear on their faces? What were their arms reaching for? Since we don’t have the autopsies of the bodies, or even photographic evidence to go off of, we can only rely on the story of the rescuers and their eyewitness accounts. We need to investigate the history of the SS Ourang Medan and see what the ship did in the past…and that’s where we run into problems. There is no nautical record of a ship named the SS Ourang Medan. That doesn’t mean that we throw the entire story out as being a hoax, Ghost Ships have a long history on the seas, and depending on the nature of the cargo and the merits of the captain and crew, some prefer to remain anonymous from the taxation and shipping records that legit ships follow. The most prevalent theory is that the SS Ourang Median was carrying toxic chemicals…possibly smuggled out of Japan during the war and stored in China. The story goes, the Japanese had a stock supply of nerve gas that they were going to use in World War II but the tide of the war had shifted before they had their opportunity. Knowing what using the gas and then being defeated would do, the Japanese smuggled the gas to China, who then turned it over to America after the war. The American Military couldn’t ship the gas on any transport that would have its cargo reported on shipping manifests, and the risk of carrying it on a military ship that could be attacked or captured was too great so they contracted with mercenary shippers to transport the cargo to a military base. Most mercenary ships handle their own security in very effective ways so capture or destruction wasn’t a concern. What should have been more of a concern would be the safe and secure handling of poison gases. If the handlers weren’t being careful with the cargo, if it wasn’t secured correctly on the ship, if the gas got out, there would have been nothing that could have saved the crew on that ship. As for the fire, if the gas was corrosive, it could have eaten through the hull, reacted to saltwater, and started a fire which caused the ship’s boilers to blow. If the cargo was something along the lines of a potassium cyanide or nitroglycerine, both would become dangerously reactive when combined with sea water. This theory seems highly plausible. It accounts for almost all the strangeness of the incident, including the reason for the horrified look...