Post by Catsmate on Feb 15, 2021 12:03:51 GMT
The Mystery of the SS Ourang Medan.
Probably the biggest mystery regarding the disappearance/fire/explosion/sinking of this ship, somewhere in the Pacific in 1947/48 (or 1940 or 1942) complete with mysterious radio message, a single, short lived, survivor, and grotesque corpses, is if the ship actually existed and if anything happened to it.
The story has become a legend, encrusted with layers of speculation, exaggeration and myth
Perfect for gaming them1.
The story starts, as much as these stories have a starting point, with a ship, the SS Ourang Medan, which was (as the name suggests2) connected to Indonesia, or what was in the forties Dutch East Indies. And this is where skepticism begins; there is no actual record of such a ship in period Dutch records, Lloyd's Register or anywhere else. It's as it it never existed.
One of the first demonstrably real accounts of the events (as apart from the reality of the vents described) is from 10OCT1948 in The Albany Times newspaper which gives the source of the story as the Dutch weekly news magazine the Elsevier Weekblad3. Four years later the story appears in the MAY1952 issue of the Proceedings of the Merchant Marine Council, a generally reliable source published by the United States Coast Guard.
The story certainly appeared in the Dutch-Indonesian newspaper De locomotief, which carried three articles on 03FEB1948, 28FEB1948 and 13MAR1948. However these articles don't give the name of the ship involved and the incident occurred around
750 km southeast of the Marshall Islands.
The second and third articles are the most interesting; they describe the experiences of the sole survivor of the Ourang Medan crew, who was found by an Italian missionary and the locals on the island of Taongi Atoll (one of the Marshall Islands). The man, as is usual in these kind of stories, died not long after being rescued but, before perishing, told the missionary the story.
In this account the ship was carrying a badly stowed cargo of drums of sulphuric acid; these burst or leaked and the fumes killed most of the crew.
According to his story the Ourang Medan was sailing from an unnamed small Chinese port to Costa Rica, and deliberately avoided the authorities. The unnamed survivor was a German sailor and the unnamed missionary to whom he told his story passed it onto Silvio Scherli, from Trieste who arote the three pieces.
Interestingly the newspaper added a disclaimer to the final article:
So even then there were doubts.
Since them various accounts of the ship's loss have appeared in numerous books and magazines, mainly on those covering Fortean phenomena.
The events.
According to the story at some point of time in or around JUN1947 (or early FEB1948) two American vessels (the City of Baltimore and the Silver Star), navigating the Straits of Malacca picked up several distress messages from the nearby Dutch merchant ship Ourang Medan.
Someone aboard the doomed ship sent the following message in Morse code:
The message was followed by a few seemingly random dots and dashes and then two words:
Eventually the Silver Star located the Ourang Medan, with no visible signs of damage. Some of the crew boarded in an attempt at a rescue (or salvage).
The ship was found littered with corpses (including that of a dog) everywhere; the dead bodies were found on the deck, sprawled on their backs, their faces frozen in a rictus of terror "upturned to the sun above with mouths gaping open and eyes staring straight ahead".
Investigation showed no survivors on board (and no rats), no visible signs of injuries on the bodies, no sign of fire, explosion or violence (mutiny or piracy) and no obvious chemical leaks. The Silver Star crew attempted to attach a tow-line, preparatory to tow the derelict to a nearby port but suddenly, and for no obvious reason, a fire then broke out in the ship's No. 4 cargo-hold.
This forced the would-be salvagers to hastily evacuate the doomed freighter and prevented any further investigations being carried out. Soon after the Silver Star witnessed the Ourang Medan exploding before finally sinking.
Now this does not gibe at all with a leaking cargo of sulphuric acid; firstly any fumes are not that lethal4, except in confined spaces, and could be ventilated. They'd be far less dangerous on deck, where all the bodies were found. Now would the acid, on its own, cause a fire and explosion; certainly not such a convenient one.
Some writers have speculated about the Ourang Medan being involved in smuggling operations, perhaps carrying hazardous cargoes such as potassium cyanide, nitroglycerin, wartime munitions or even wartime stocks of nerve gas.
According to these theories some of the cargo was breached and mixed with other elements and/or sea-water to produce toxic gases which asphyxiated or poisoned the crew. Continuation of this process caused the fire and explosion.
Others suggest that the ship was transporting nerve gas from old Japanese stocks in China; either for the US government, or for a faction in the Chinese Civil War or for use in Indonesia (by the rebels or the Dutch during the Indonesian National Revolution).
Game use.
Well it seems like the perfect place to drop a group of time travellers; either to investigate the mystery, or to get swept up into it (or both). What caused the mysterious deaths? Was it a wartime weapon (chemical agent, psionic disrupter...) and who used it (pirates, the US, the Dutch, a Mad Scientist, the Chinese, Japanese holdouts, Nazis...)?
Was the Ourang Medan carrying a group of 'off the books' passengers? Or had it been hired to carry a group to a mysterious island to pick up something?
And who orchestrated the cover-up?
References.
Wikipedia article
The Skittish Library piece (skeptical and has excellent notes)
Seeks Ghosts (far less skeptical and a different account)
Short on Content (speculative)
Comments? Ideas? Suggestions?
1. In fact it has already spawned one video game; The Dark Pictures Anthology: Man of Medan
2. Ourang means 'man' (approximately in Malay, similar to orang utan, 'man of the forest'. Medan is a city on Sumatra.
3. Still around today.
4. Sulphuric acid reacts with sea-water to produce sulphur oxides and chlorine. Plus quite an amount of heat, enough to cause a steam explosion.
Probably the biggest mystery regarding the disappearance/fire/explosion/sinking of this ship, somewhere in the Pacific in 1947/48 (or 1940 or 1942) complete with mysterious radio message, a single, short lived, survivor, and grotesque corpses, is if the ship actually existed and if anything happened to it.
The story has become a legend, encrusted with layers of speculation, exaggeration and myth
Perfect for gaming them1.
The story starts, as much as these stories have a starting point, with a ship, the SS Ourang Medan, which was (as the name suggests2) connected to Indonesia, or what was in the forties Dutch East Indies. And this is where skepticism begins; there is no actual record of such a ship in period Dutch records, Lloyd's Register or anywhere else. It's as it it never existed.
- In the Whoniverse this could be down to a cover-up of the events that followed, or a tiny glitch in the big ball of timey-wimey stuff.
One of the first demonstrably real accounts of the events (as apart from the reality of the vents described) is from 10OCT1948 in The Albany Times newspaper which gives the source of the story as the Dutch weekly news magazine the Elsevier Weekblad3. Four years later the story appears in the MAY1952 issue of the Proceedings of the Merchant Marine Council, a generally reliable source published by the United States Coast Guard.
- Though there were newspaper reports of the incident in 1940 too, in several British newspapers (specifically the Daily Mirror and the Yorkshire Evening Post but possibly others) who credit the Associated Press as the source. These accountsare significantly different; the incident took place near the Solomon Islands and the strange SOS messages being rather different from later reports.
- Which might suggest a ship displaced in time.
The story certainly appeared in the Dutch-Indonesian newspaper De locomotief, which carried three articles on 03FEB1948, 28FEB1948 and 13MAR1948. However these articles don't give the name of the ship involved and the incident occurred around
750 km southeast of the Marshall Islands.
The second and third articles are the most interesting; they describe the experiences of the sole survivor of the Ourang Medan crew, who was found by an Italian missionary and the locals on the island of Taongi Atoll (one of the Marshall Islands). The man, as is usual in these kind of stories, died not long after being rescued but, before perishing, told the missionary the story.
In this account the ship was carrying a badly stowed cargo of drums of sulphuric acid; these burst or leaked and the fumes killed most of the crew.
According to his story the Ourang Medan was sailing from an unnamed small Chinese port to Costa Rica, and deliberately avoided the authorities. The unnamed survivor was a German sailor and the unnamed missionary to whom he told his story passed it onto Silvio Scherli, from Trieste who arote the three pieces.
Interestingly the newspaper added a disclaimer to the final article:
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.
- Or pressure to hush the affair up.
Since them various accounts of the ship's loss have appeared in numerous books and magazines, mainly on those covering Fortean phenomena.
The events.
According to the story at some point of time in or around JUN1947 (or early FEB1948) two American vessels (the City of Baltimore and the Silver Star), navigating the Straits of Malacca picked up several distress messages from the nearby Dutch merchant ship Ourang Medan.
Someone aboard the doomed ship sent the following message in Morse code:
S.O.S. Ourang Medan * * * We float. All officers including the captain, dead in chartroom and on the bridge. Probably whole of crew dead * * *.
- Frankly, having some experience with Morse, the message is odd; the phrasing wrong for an emergency message. I would expect words like "of" and "on the" to be omitted for brevity.
- The two ships named, the City of Baltimore and the Silver Star did exist and were operating in the general area. Their logs carry no account of receiving such a message or of the events that followed.
The message was followed by a few seemingly random dots and dashes and then two words:
I die
- Which really is overloading the melodrama.
Eventually the Silver Star located the Ourang Medan, with no visible signs of damage. Some of the crew boarded in an attempt at a rescue (or salvage).
The ship was found littered with corpses (including that of a dog) everywhere; the dead bodies were found on the deck, sprawled on their backs, their faces frozen in a rictus of terror "upturned to the sun above with mouths gaping open and eyes staring straight ahead".
- That's from the Proceedings of the Merchant Marine Council, which also describes the bodies as "horrible caricatures".
Investigation showed no survivors on board (and no rats), no visible signs of injuries on the bodies, no sign of fire, explosion or violence (mutiny or piracy) and no obvious chemical leaks. The Silver Star crew attempted to attach a tow-line, preparatory to tow the derelict to a nearby port but suddenly, and for no obvious reason, a fire then broke out in the ship's No. 4 cargo-hold.
This forced the would-be salvagers to hastily evacuate the doomed freighter and prevented any further investigations being carried out. Soon after the Silver Star witnessed the Ourang Medan exploding before finally sinking.
Now this does not gibe at all with a leaking cargo of sulphuric acid; firstly any fumes are not that lethal4, except in confined spaces, and could be ventilated. They'd be far less dangerous on deck, where all the bodies were found. Now would the acid, on its own, cause a fire and explosion; certainly not such a convenient one.
Some writers have speculated about the Ourang Medan being involved in smuggling operations, perhaps carrying hazardous cargoes such as potassium cyanide, nitroglycerin, wartime munitions or even wartime stocks of nerve gas.
- Though the later seems rather unlikely given that Japan hadn't developed nerve agents.Bottom.
According to these theories some of the cargo was breached and mixed with other elements and/or sea-water to produce toxic gases which asphyxiated or poisoned the crew. Continuation of this process caused the fire and explosion.
Others suggest that the ship was transporting nerve gas from old Japanese stocks in China; either for the US government, or for a faction in the Chinese Civil War or for use in Indonesia (by the rebels or the Dutch during the Indonesian National Revolution).
Game use.
Well it seems like the perfect place to drop a group of time travellers; either to investigate the mystery, or to get swept up into it (or both). What caused the mysterious deaths? Was it a wartime weapon (chemical agent, psionic disrupter...) and who used it (pirates, the US, the Dutch, a Mad Scientist, the Chinese, Japanese holdouts, Nazis...)?
Was the Ourang Medan carrying a group of 'off the books' passengers? Or had it been hired to carry a group to a mysterious island to pick up something?
And who orchestrated the cover-up?
References.
Wikipedia article
The Skittish Library piece (skeptical and has excellent notes)
Seeks Ghosts (far less skeptical and a different account)
Short on Content (speculative)
Comments? Ideas? Suggestions?
1. In fact it has already spawned one video game; The Dark Pictures Anthology: Man of Medan
2. Ourang means 'man' (approximately in Malay, similar to orang utan, 'man of the forest'. Medan is a city on Sumatra.
3. Still around today.
4. Sulphuric acid reacts with sea-water to produce sulphur oxides and chlorine. Plus quite an amount of heat, enough to cause a steam explosion.