THE SS OURANG MEDAN

The Ourang Medan was a Dutch cargo ship that mysteriously sunk in the Strait of Malacca between Malaysia and Indonesia in June 1947. Despite efforts to save the vessel and its crew, none of the people on board were ever seen or heard from again. The cause of the mysterious sinking, and the fate of all on board, remain unknown, though various theories have been proposed over the years.

The story of the Ourang Medan began when the British freighter, the Silver Star, encountered a strange, unidentified ship drifting in the Strait of Malacca at around 2:00 PM on February 26th, 1947. The Silver Star, captain David Warsaw, noticed an S.O.S. signal being sent from the unidentified vessel, which they quickly identified as the Dutch merchant ship, the Ourang Medan. The S.O.S. signal was quite brief, reading simply:

“All officers including the captain are dead. Lying in the chartroom and bridge is a dead man, with eyes wide open, staring at the ceiling. Possibly whole crew dead.”

After receiving the S.O.S. signal, the Silver Star sent out a search and rescue mission to the Ourang Medan. The rescue mission quickly located the vessel, which appeared to be dead in the water, with all of its lights extinguished. Once the Silver Star had pulled alongside the Ourang Medan, a team of rescuers was dispatched to investigate the ship.

The crew of the Silver Star, while searching the Ourang Medan, quickly discovered the horrifying truth. All of the Ourang Medan's crew, including the captain, were found dead, still in their positions, as if frozen in place in the moment of their deaths. Some of the crew members had assumed defensive positions, as if in anticipation of a possible attack. In addition to the crew members, the Silver Star's rescue party also discovered a number of dead animals, believed to be chickens, on the Ourang Medan's deck.

TheSilver Star’s crew could find no obvious cause of death and found no injuries or marks on any of the bodies. This led some to believe that the Ourang Medan’s crew had perished due to an unknown poison, although this has never been confirmed. Although a fire was discovered on board the Ourang Medan, it was determined to have occurred after the crew had already died, as the fire seemed to have burned erratically and without a definite source.

In an effort to salvage the ship, the Silver Star's crew connected a towline to the Ourang Medan. However, no sooner had the towline been secured than the Ourang Medan suddenly began to smoke and emit sparks from its stern. The smoke and sparks soon turned into a massive explosion, blowing the Ourang Medan into several pieces. Seconds later, the mangled remains of the ship sinking into the depths of the Strait of Malacca.

Ultimately, the fate of the Ourang Medan, and all of of it's crew and passengers, remains a mystery. Speculation ranges from the ship having hit a mine which lead the crewman to retreat below decks in panic, to the possibility of a poison leak killing everyone onboard. But no one will ever know the true cause of the disaster, because the only thing to survive the Ourang Medan, were the stories and legends that surround it.

Theories

Unsecured hazardous materials cargo

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.[2]

Another theory is that the ship was transporting nerve gas which the Japanese military had been storing in China during the war, and which 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 an island in the Pacific.

Carbon monoxide (CO) poisoning

Gaddis puts forward the theory that an undetected smouldering 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 spreading out of control, leading to the vessel's ultimate destruction.[11]