The SS Ourang Medan was a supposed ghost ship which, according to various sources, became a shipwreck in the Dutch East Indies (modern Indonesia) in the Straits of Malacca waters, or elsewhere, after its entire crew had died under suspicious circumstances, either in 1940, 1947 or 1948, depending on the newspaper source. Most people agree that the story of the Ourang Medan is an urban legend due to the fact that there were never records of a ship named the Ourang Medan.
The mystery of the SS Ourang Medan[]
One English reference to the ship and the incident was published in the May 1952 issue of the Proceedings of the Merchant Marine Council, published by the United States Coast Guard. An earlier English reference was published on October 10, 1948 in The Albany Times of Albany, New York and references its original source as Elsevier's Weekly. The word Ourang (also written Orang) is Malay or Indonesian for "man" or "person",[5] whereas Medan is the largest city on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, giving an approximate translation of "Man of Medan". Accounts of the ship's accident have appeared in various books and magazines, mainly on Forteana. 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 De locomotief: Samarangsch handels- en advertentie-blad (February 3, 1948, with two photographs, February 28, 1948, and March 13, 1948).[8] 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 Marshall Islands. 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 Taongi Atoll in the Marshall Islands. The man, before perishing, tells the missionary that the ship was carrying a badly stowed cargo of oil of vitriol, 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 Costa Rica, 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 Trieste, Italy. 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 the entire story is a fantasy, a thrilling romance of the sea. On the other hand, the author, Silvio Scherli, assures us of the authenticity of the story."[8]
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 Daily Mirror and the Yorkshire Evening Post. Again, there were differences in the story: the location being the Solomon Islands, and the SOS messages different from later reports. The story still appears to originate with Silvio Scherli in Trieste.