SS Ourang Medan was a reported ghost ship and a story that people say happened in the 1940s. The ship was supposedly found floating without moving after sending out short messages for help. Boats that went to rescue the ship reported finding all the crew members dead with their eyes open and their faces frozen in shock, as if they saw something very terrible. When rescue workers tried to pull the Ourang Medan to a port, a fire reportedly started in the ship’s storage area, causing it to sink and hiding its mysteries forever.
The most well-known version of the story says the ship was near the Dutch East Indies (now part of Indonesia) in the waters of the Straits of Malacca. Other versions of the story place the ship near the Marshall Islands or the Solomon Islands. The story was first reported in Italy in 1940 and later that same year in England. Similar stories were shared again in 1948 and 1952. Researchers have not been able to find the ship in any official records, and the details about its location and other facts change in different versions of the story. These inconsistencies have led to discussions about the tale in mystery magazines like the Fortean Times.
SSOurang Medan
The word "Ourang" (also spelled "Orang") means "man" or "person" in Malay or Indonesian. The word "Medan" refers to the largest city on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, so "Ourang Medan" means something like "man of Medan." Stories about a ship's accident have been written in books and magazines, especially in Forteana. However, it is unclear if these stories are true or if the ship even existed. Information about the ship's design and history is not available. Searches for official records or reports about the ship's accident have not found any evidence.
Story
In 1940, the story described a distress signal sent from an area south of the Solomon Islands. The first message read, "SOS from the steamship Ourang Medan. Please contact a doctor. Urgent." This was followed by, "Probable second officer dead. Other crew members also killed. Ignore medical advice. SOS, urgent help needed from a warship." After providing the ship's location, the final message received was an incomplete phrase, "crew has … ." Ships that responded to the Ourang Medan received no reply. The 1940 version of the story describes rescue ships approaching the ship, which was leaning to one side in the water. When they boarded, they found multiple crew members dead at their posts. As they moved deeper into the ship, explosions were heard, and the rescuers left the ship. They watched it catch fire and sink into the Pacific.
By 1948, the story included more details. One version states that in or around June 1947, two American ships, the City of Baltimore and the Silver Star, received distress messages from the nearby Dutch merchant ship Ourang Medan. Some sources say the event occurred in 1947, while others, like Vincent Gaddis, mention early February 1948.
A radio operator on the Ourang Medan is reported to have sent a message in Morse code: "S.O.S. from Ourang Medan. We float. All officers, including the captain, dead in the chartroom and on the bridge. Probably the whole crew is dead." After more unclear signals, the message "I die." was received. No further messages were sent. When the Silver Star crew located and boarded the seemingly undamaged Ourang Medan to rescue survivors, they found the ship filled with corpses, including a dog. The dead bodies were sprawled on their backs, with frozen faces supposedly showing fear, open mouths, and wide eyes. The bodies looked like scary drawings. No survivors were found, and no injuries were visible on the dead. As the ship was being prepared to be towed to a nearby port, a fire broke out in the No. 4 cargo-hold. The boarding party quickly evacuated, stopping further investigations. Soon after, the Ourang Medan exploded and sank.
Some versions of the story mention a sole survivor, an unnamed German crew member, who swam to safety. He was later found by an Italian missionary and local people on Taongi Atoll in the Marshall Islands. Before dying, the man told the missionary that the ship carried a poorly stored cargo of oil of vitriol. He said most of the crew died because poisonous fumes leaked from broken containers. According to the story, the Ourang Medan was traveling from an unnamed small Chinese port to Costa Rica and intentionally avoided authorities.
Hypotheses
Bainton and others suggest that Ourang Medan may have been involved in illegally transporting chemical substances, such as a mix of potassium cyanide and nitroglycerin, or wartime nerve agents. According to these ideas, seawater could have entered the ship's storage area, reacting with the cargo to create harmful gases that caused the crew to suffocate or be poisoned. Later, the seawater might have reacted with the nitroglycerin, leading to the reported fire and explosion.
Another theory suggests that the ship was carrying tabun, a nerve gas that the Japanese military had stored in China during the war. After the war, this gas was transferred to the U.S. military. Because no U.S. ship could transport it without leaving evidence of the shipment, it was loaded onto a ship that was not officially registered for transport to the U.S. or an island in the Pacific.
Gaddis proposes that an unnoticed slow-burning fire or a problem with the ship's boiler system might have caused the shipwreck. Leaking carbon monoxide could have caused the deaths of everyone on board. The fire would then have spread uncontrollably, eventually leading to the ship's destruction.
Contemporaneous coverage
The earliest version of the story appeared in Il Piccolo, the local newspaper of Trieste, in a series of articles titled I drammi del mare ("dramas of the sea") written by Silvio Scherli in October 1940. Scherli worked as a maritime radio operator and part-time journalist.
A month later, reports about the event were published in British newspapers: The Daily Mirror and the Yorkshire Evening Post both included stories about it, using information from the Associated Press. These early reports described the ship as being near the Solomon Islands, left out the names of the rescue vessels, and included SOS messages that differed from later accounts. The source of the story was listed as the Associated Press, with the report said to come from Trieste, Italy, but attributed to a Merchant Marine Officer.
In 1948, three articles about the story appeared in the Dutch-Indonesian newspaper De locomotief: Samarangsch handels – en advertentie-blad. The first article was published on February 3, 1948, and included two photographs copied from the Il Piccolo article. The other articles appeared on February 28, 1948, and March 13, 1948. These stories credited Silvio Scherli of Trieste as the source. They included new details not mentioned in earlier reports, such as changed SOS messages and the addition of a surviving sailor who, while dying, told a missionary about the events. The missionary later shared the story with Scherli. The Dutch newspaper ended with a statement:
"This is the final part of our story about the mystery of the Ourang Medan. We must repeat that we have no other information about this 'mystery of the sea.' We cannot answer the many unanswered questions in the story. It may seem clear that the entire story is a fantasy, a thrilling tale of the sea. However, the author, Silvio Scherli, claims the story is true."
In October 10, 1948, the story was published in The Albany Times of Albany, New York, and credited the Dutch newspaper Elsevier's Weekly as the original source. The story was later repeated in the May 1952 issue of the Proceedings of the Merchant Marine Council, published by the United States Coast Guard.
Silvio Scherli is reported to have written a report about Trieste's "Export Trade" on September 28, 1959.
Skepticism
Several authors say they could not find any information about the case in Lloyd's Register of American and Foreign Shipping. Also, no ship records for a vessel named Ourang Medan were found in several countries, including the Netherlands. Author Roy Bainton says the identity of the Silver Star, a ship reported to have tried to rescue others but failed, has probably been identified. However, the lack of information about the sunken ship has led to questions about the story's truthfulness. Logs from the Silver Star do not mention a rescue attempt. Bainton and others suggest that details such as the date, location, names of ships, and events of the accident might be incorrect or exaggerated, or that the story may not be true at all.