Who witnessed the Explosion of the Ourang Medan? #shorts

Two American vessels, along with many other ships, are navigating through the Straits of Malacca in a routine and quiet voyage. Plenty of ships occupy these waters, so it was by no means uncharted territory. In fact with the bright sun and calm waters, this day nothing was out of the ordinary.

That was until the radio started crackling. Someone was sending a message in Morse Code.

You wouldn’t have had to be the more experienced deckhand to instantly recognize what those first few beeps spelled out. “S….O….S”.

‘Save our souls’. Souls? Ghoulish indeed.

But the message didn’t stop there. What came next shook the bones of all those who heard it.

“We float. All officers including the captain, dead in the chartroom and on the bridge. Probably whole of crew dead”

Dead? Did this mean the ships would be racing to a search and rescue operation or a crime scene?

It was time to think carefully about who was sending this message and why. Apparently, it wasn’t the captain but would a lowly deckhand be as versed in Morse code?

And if they are the only survivor does that mean they are the culprit, or just lucky? Perhaps it was bait. Perhaps the passing vessels were being lured into a trap by pirates. Or worse, a mutinous crew turned insane.

But then, more Morse code came over the radio. This time though the messages made no sense. It was garbled nonsense. Just some confused dots and dashes.

Maybe this person was trying to communicate in another language. They had said the name of their ship after all - ‘SS Ourang Medan’. In time, investigators would discover that ‘Ourang’ means ‘man’ in Indonesian.

Then, the final message. This time the meaning was clear. There could be no confusion or uncertainty: “I die”. Silence. The Morse Code ceased.

The first boat to locate the origin of the messages was the American vessel ‘Silver Star’. What they saw as they approached seemed normal: a seemingly undamaged boat floating in the ocean under a bright sun. If anything it was idyllic.

The name written on the hull confirmed that this was indeed the Ourang Medan they had been searching for. However, attempts were made to signal to the boat but no response came forth.

Should the Silver Star wait for backup or should they act now in case anyone on board needed immediate help?

The crew of the Silver Star weighed up their options and chose the latter. They boarded the ship. Once again everything seemed normal. At first. Then they saw that whoever had been sending the messages had been telling the truth. Everyone was dead.

Corpses lay about the ship with not a single person alive. Yet, there had been no massacre. There was no blood. No disfigurement. But stranger still was how the bodies of the crew were positioned on their backs staring up at the sun.

Though the bodies were not organized neatly, they were not strewn about randomly. It was really as if everyone was doing their job when suddenly something happened to all of them.

What caused them to fall to the ground? Given none were face down they must have been looking skyward for a reason. Their faces with teeth bared suggest something fearful in their final moments. In fact, even the ship’s dog was found dead, frozen in the same manner as if it passed away mid-growl.

The ship was explored yet no clues were discovered. No sign of a struggle, no bullet holes in the walls, or disarray in the rooms.

As the members of Silver Star surveyed the ghost ship, another American boat arrived - The City of Baltimore. They would not board the mysterious shipwreck, however, but they would become a valuable second witness in what was about to unfold.

You see, little did any of the rescue teams know at the time but a fire had broken out in the bowels of the ship. In fact, the Silver Star crew had only been on the SS Ourang Medan for a short time before they noticed flames spreading through the craft. This has led some to speculate whether this fire was purely an accident.

Could it have been that someone on board was hastily trying to cover their tracks upon the arrival of witnesses? Or was the fire related to the cause of death?

Those answers would have to wait as the Silver Star crew had to quickly abandon the ship lest they too add to the body count. But no sooner had the crew retreated to their own boat did the SS Ourang Medan explode.

Witnesses said that whatever combusted in the hull of this grisly tableau did so with such force that the ghost ship lifted from the water momentarily before quickly sinking down into the deep waters without leaving a single trace or survivor.

Or so it was believed.

According to one of the many versions of this story, a sole survivor was indeed discovered sometime later.
An Italian Missionary and the natives on Taoni Atoll - a coral near the Marshal islands - discovered a German man washed up on the shore.