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Contents.The Mystery of the SS Ourang Medan One English reference to the ship and the incident is in May 1954 issue of the Proceedings of the Council, published by the. An earlier English reference was published on October 10, 1948 in of and references its original source as.
The word Ourang (also written Orang) is or for 'man' or 'person', whereas is the largest city on the Indonesian island of, giving an approximate translation of 'Man from Medan'. Accounts of the ship's accident have appeared in various books and magazines, mainly on. Their factual accuracy and even the ship's existence, however, are unconfirmed, and details of the vessel's construction and history, if any, remain unknown. Searches for any official registration or accident investigation recorded have proven unsuccessful.The story's first appearance was a series of three articles in the Dutch-Indonesian newspaper (February 3, 1948, February 28, 1948, and March 13, 1948).
The story is mostly the same as the later versions, but with significant differences. The name of the ship that found the Ourang Medan is never mentioned, but the location of the encounter is described as 400 nautical miles (740 km; 460 mi) southeast of the.
The second and third articles describe the experiences of the sole survivor of the Ourang Medan crew, who was found by an Italian missionary and natives on in the Marshall Islands. The man, before perishing, tells the missionary that the ship was carrying a badly stowed cargo of, and that most of the crew perished because of the poisonous fumes escaping from broken containers. According to the story, the Ourang Medan was sailing from an unnamed small Chinese port to, and deliberately avoided the authorities. The survivor, an unnamed German, died after telling his story to the missionary, who told the story to the author, Silvio Scherli of,. The Dutch newspaper concludes with a disclaimer:'This is the last part of our story about the mystery of the Ourang Medan. We must repeat that we don't have any other data on this 'mystery of the sea'. Nor can we answer the many unanswered questions in the story.
It may seem obvious that this is a thrilling romance of the sea. On the other hand, the author, Silvio Scherli, assures us of the authenticity of the story.' Silvio Scherli is said to have produced a report on Trieste 'Export Trade' on September 28, 1959.New evidence found by The Skittish Library shows there were 1940 newspaper reports of the incident taken from the Associated Press in British newspapers the and the.
Again, there were differences in the story. The location being the, and the SOS messages different from later reports. The story still appears to originate with Silvio Scherzi in Trieste. Possible accident According to the story, at some point of time in or around June 1947 ( and others list the approximate date as early February 1948 ), two American vessels navigating the, the City of Baltimore and the Silver Star, among others passing by, picked up several distress messages from the nearby Dutch merchant ship Ourang Medan. A aboard the troubled vessel sent the following message in: 'S.O.S. From Ourang Medan.
We float. All officers including the captain, dead in chartroom and on the bridge. Probably whole of crew dead.' A few confused dots and dashes (of Morse code) later, two words came through clearly. They were 'I die.' Then, after that chilling message, there was nothing more heard of.
When the Silver Star crew eventually located and boarded the apparently-undamaged Ourang Medan in an attempt at a rescue, the ship was found littered with corpses (including the carcass of a dog) everywhere, with the dead bodies found sprawled on their backs, the frozen (and allegedly badly-frightened) faces of the deceased upturned to the sun above with mouths gaping open and eyes staring straight ahead, with the corpses resembling horrible caricatures. No survivors were located and no visible signs of injuries on the dead bodies were observed. Just as the ship was to be prepared for a tow by the Silver Star to a nearby port, a fire then suddenly broke out in the ship's No. 4 cargo-hold, forcing the boarding party to hastily evacuate the doomed Dutch freighter, thus preventing any further investigations to be carried out.
Soon after, the Ourang Medan was witnessed exploding before finally sinking. 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 and or even wartime stocks of. 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 and/or.
Later, the sea water would have reacted with the nitroglycerin, causing the reported fire and explosion.Another theory is that the ship was transporting nerve gas which the Japanese military had been storing in during the war, and which was handed over to the at the end of the war. 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 would have caused the deaths of all aboard, with the fire slowly spreading out of control, leading to the vessel's ultimate destruction. The Ourang and the C.I.A. Public interest in the story of the Ourang Medan is reflected in correspondence sent to the U.S. In December 1959, C.H. Of Scottsdale, Arizona sent a private letter to Director of the C.I.A.
Within the letter, Marck first asks the recipient of the letter if they believe the story of the Ourang deals with “something from the unknown” then retells the story of the Ourang and its sinking.The letter was released to the public May 5, 2003. The person to whom Marck wrote remains by the C.I.A.
But in the letter, Marck references an earlier writing he sent on May 29, 1958. It was answered briefly 'on behalf of Mr. Dulles' by the 'Assistant to the Director,' who takes a dismissive tone. This response, released May 7, 2002, establishes the C.I.A. As the recipient. Skepticism Several authors note their inability to find any mention of the case in.
Furthermore, no registration records for a ship by the name of Ourang Medan could be located in various countries, including the. While author Roy Bainton states that the identity of the Silver Star, reported to have been involved in the failed rescue attempt, has been established with high probability, the complete lack of information on the sunken ship itself has given rise to suspicion about the origins and credibility of the account. Ships logs for the Silver Star did not show a record of any such rescue attempt. 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.One British researcher has found the story of the Ourang Medan, transposed to the, but also with a Trieste connection, in two British newspapers in 1940 ( for 21 November 1940 and for 22 November 1940), both quoting AP news agency. See also., a 2019 video game influenced by the Ourang Medan.References. ^ Estelle (December 29, 2015). The Skittish Library.
Retrieved 2019-04-02. ^ Bainton, Roy (September 1999). Fortean Times.
Archived from on 2007-02-05. ^ 'We Sail together'. Proceedings of the Merchant Marine Council. May 1952. (PDF). October 10, 1948. Retrieved November 22, 2016.
Retrieved 2007-04-20. De locomotief: Samarangsch handels- en advertentie-blad. February 3, 1948. De locomotief: Samarangsch handels- en advertentie-blad. February 28, 1948. ^.
De locomotief: Samarangsch handels- en advertentie-blad. March 13, 1948. Estelle (December 29, 2015). The Skittish Library. Retrieved 2017-05-08. ^ Gaddis, Vincent (1965).
Invisible Horizons. Ace Books, Inc., New York. Pp. 125–126. ^ Edwards, Frank (June 1953). 'Strangest of All'.
Fate Magazine. ^ Raybin Emert, Phyllis (1990).
Tom Doherty Associates, Inc., New York. ^ Winer, Richard (2000). Berkley.External links. about the ghost ship, featuring an interview with Roy Bainton.
slideshow exclude=”4109″In December 1940, a British steamship bound for Liverpool left Calcutta laden with precious cargo, including up to 240 tons of silver worth an estimated $210 million in today’s dollars. Operating for the United Kingdom’s Ministry of War Transport, which requisitioned merchant ships during World War II, SS Gairsoppa joined a military convoy and headed northward into waters swarming with German submarines. On February 14, 1941, dwindling coal reserves and stormy weather forced the lagging vessel to break away from its escorts and make for the port of Galway in western Ireland. Three days later, a Nazi U-boat commanded by the decorated German captain Ernst Mengersen launched a torpedo that ripped through Gairsoppa’s steel hull, toppling its foremast and destroying its wireless antenna.
Unable to send out a distress call, the surviving members of the ship’s 85-strong crew came under machine gun fire as they scrambled onto lifeboats. Their burning craft, built in 1919 and designed for commerce rather than warfare, sank within 20 minutes, disappearing into the frigid depths of the North Atlantic roughly 300 miles west of Ireland.
A single lifeboat reached Cornwall 13 days later; the rest were lost at sea. It capsized while drifting near the coast, however, throwing several men into the surf.
Three schoolgirls spotted the incident and summoned help, but only one person—Gairsoppa’s second officer, Richard Ayres—was dragged ashore, barely alive after two weeks on the open water. He received high honors for his efforts to save his fellow sailors and died in 1992. The lifeboat’s other passengers are thought to have died during the journey or drowned in its final moments.