mystery Archives - The Skittish Library

The Myth of the Ourang Medan Ghost Ship, 1940

The story of the ghost ship the Ourang Medan has never been as famous as that of the Marie Celeste, despite being more gruesome in its details. The entire crew, ship’s dog included, were found dead with their mouths open and their eyes staring, and yet there was no sign of what had been responsible for their deaths, bar some desperate SOS messages sent during the tragedy. It’s a mystery in more ways than one – not only has much time been spent trying to unpick what might have happened on board via many, ever-more fanciful, theories, but there’s a large school of thought that says the story is actually pure fiction.

Nothing’s been conclusively proved either way, except….I think I’ve found some evidence that will change this story for good. As far as I’m concerned, I think my new information proves that it’s merely a modern fabrication, an urban legend, or whatever the nautical equivalent of that would be.

There are a lot of interesting blogs detailing what is known of the story or, rather, what is not known. There’s Seeks Ghosts, and M. B. Forde’s site too. There’s a lot of differing details and speculation, so I’m going to tell the story as it appears on Wikipedia.

The story first appeared in the Dutch-Indonesian newspaper, The Locomotive, or De locomotief: Samarangsch handels- en advertentie-blad in instalments between 3-28 February 1948 and is, in brief, this.

At some point around June 1947, a SOS message in Morse code was sent by the Dutch freighter ship, the Ourang Medan. The ship was in distress in a position 400 nautical miles south-east of the Marshall Islands in the Pacific Ocean, and the messages were both cryptic and chilling. As received by the US ships the City of Baltimore and the Silver Star, the first message said “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 * * *.” Some morse gibberish followed, and then the second, and final, message sent by a doomed radio operator was received. It simply said “I die.”

The Silver Star located the Ourang Medan and its crew boarded the ship, which appeared to have suffered no damage. They found the crew were dead to a man, and all the corpses lay on their backs in the aforementioned manner – eyes staring, mouth open as if screaming, looking as if they were “horrible caricatures” of themselves. The crew of the Silver Star found nothing that explained the situation and planned to hook up the ship to tow it into the nearest port. But before they could do this, a fire broke out in one of the cargo holds and the would-be rescuers evacuated back to their own ship. Shortly afterwards, they saw the Ourang Medan explode and sink into the water, never to be seen again.

Other, later, versions of the story conclude that the date was actually February 1948, and the position of the ghost ship was instead in the Straits of Malacca, in Indonesian waters. The tale had apparently originated from a surviving German crew member of the Ourang who swam ashore to Toangi atoll in the Marshall Islands. There, he told his story to a missionary, who in turn told it to Silvio Scherli of Trieste, Italy.

Mr Scherli was the source of the story in the Dutch newspaper. The reason the crew member gave for the mystery was that the ship had been carrying an illicit load of sulphuric acid, and fumes escaping from broken containers had overpowered the crew. There have since been many other theories about what other top secret cargo the ship may have been carrying instead – being not long after the end of the Second World War, a cargo of poisonous gases has been suggested.

There are a few issues with the story – not least that there is no official registration for a ship named the Ourang Medan and, while the Silver Star did exist, by 1948 it was renamed the SS Santa Cecilia and more often to be seen around Brazil, not the Strait of Malacca.

Following the 1948 Dutch articles, there appeared the earliest known English reference to the story, published by the United States Coast Guard in the May 1952 issue of the Proceedings of the Merchant Marine Council. The original narrator Silvio Scherli also apparently wrote a report on it for the Trieste “Export Trade” publication of September 28, 1959.

1952 was the earliest known mention of the story in English – that is, until now.

If the incident occurred in 1947-48, the first reporting of it was in 1948, and the first mention in English was in the US in 1952 – then how come I’ve found British newspaper articles on the subject from 1940? Written at least 7 years before the tragedy was even supposed to have happened. Peculiar, eh?

I’ve found mentions in two UK newspapers – The Yorkshire Post and The Daily Mirror, dating from subsequent days in November 1940. Here they are:

From the Yorkshire Evening Post, 21st November 1940:

And The Daily Mirror, 22nd November 1940:

The full pages, just to show they are indeed from 1940 –

Yorkshire Evening Post, 21st November 1940

And –

The Daily Mirror, 22nd November 1940

These articles are available on the endlessly fascinating British Newspaper Archive, if you want to check yourself.

The details in both reports are the same, although it’s more expanded in The Yorkshire Post. The reason for this is that they’re both from the same source – The Associated Press. As the AP says, it’s “the world’s oldest and largest newsgathering organization.” If it originated there, I would speculate that there must be an awful lot more newspapers in the world who reported this story in November 1940.

Many details are the same as the 1948 version, with notable exceptions. There’s nothing of the lurid details of how the dead crew looked; the ship is a steamship, not a freighter; and the location has changed again. In this first report, the ship was found south-east of the Solomon Islands.

Here’s a map of that Pacific area, I’ve marked the Marshall Islands, the Solomon Islands and the Strait of Malacca:

See how they’re a very long way away from each other, although admittedly in a sparsely populated region? In 1940, it’s the Solomon Islands, in 1948 it’s suddenly 1300 miles north in the Marshall Islands, and finally it’s located a whole 4000 miles further west in the Strait of Malacca. I think it would be hard to have been so mistaken as to where this ship was found.

Significantly, the SOS messages are markedly different. This is very interesting.

The first says “SOS from the steamship Ourang Medan. Beg ships with shortwave wireless get touch doctor. Urgent.” The second – “Probable second officer dead. Other members crew also killed. Disregard medical consultation. SOS urgent assistance warship.” The article says the ship then gave her position and ended with the final, incomplete, message “crew has…”

I suppose there was no need to mention warships the next time the story was dusted off, in post-war 1948.

Another notable difference is that the story claims to come directly from a merchant marine officer from the rescuing ship. Not a washed-up survivor from the sunken ship telling his story to a missionary. That rescuing ship wasn’t named here, and for that matter it wasn’t named in the 1948 version either. The detail of the Silver Star was thrown in later down the line, on its journey from newspaper report to legend.

BUT, and I think this is the crux of the story, we have the same detail that the information comes from Trieste, and was dated that very Thursday morning as well – in other words, that same day it appeared in the evening paper.

Trieste is the crucial link, as we can therefore assume that Silvio Scherli of Trieste is the same person involved in this story, as he was in the later version. If he was the source of the 1940 story, then there’s simply no way he could have truthfully reported on the matter in 1948, describing it as a new incident. It could be the case that there was another source of the story in Trieste in 1940 – perhaps someone who told it to Silvio? If the story came from Indonesia, say, then the sources could be numerous. But Trieste seems too specific, and too distant, to have many witnesses or other people who knew about this story from far away. The Associated Press archives, or other newspaper stories which blossomed from their reports, might be the key here.

The Locomotive stated clearly that the entirety of its information came from Scherli – it ended its series with a very sceptical “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.”

What’s that I can smell? Is it a broken casket of sulphuric acid, or is it somebody’s pants on fire?

It seems a likely theory that this “romance of the sea” began and ended with Mr Scherli. And if so, perhaps he got the taste for embellishing his story as the years went on – adding the staring eyes and gaping mouths and changing the location. Ourang Medan translates as “Man from Medan” in Indonesian or Malay and perhaps the city of Medan in Indonesia, which is directly adjacent to the Malacca Strait, may have belatedly felt like a more suitable location for a ship bearing its name.

It’s an area where mysteries could, and obviously did, thrive – in fact the Marshall Islands have also been proposed as the site where Amelia Earhart crash-landed.

In the end, my theory is that Silvio didn’t get quite the notoriety he sought the first time round, the news buried by the events of the ongoing world war. Perhaps he sat on it until the war ended, world news quietened down, and tried again. But maybe there’s more still to be found in how this story got off the ground.

Either way, don’t believe everything you read in the papers.

The Grand National is coming up soon – living in Liverpool as I do, this is a big deal in the city, although I’ve never been myself.

I was reading up about the history of the event and the provenance of one of the most infamous jumps of the race – Becher’s Brook. It was named after Captain Martin Becher, who won the first Steeplechase at Aintree in 1836, on a horse called The Duke. However, this race and the following two are now disregarded as part of the history of the Grand National proper. The first “real” Grand National was officially in 1839, although it was then called The Grand Liverpool Steeplechase. Becher also entered the 1839 race, riding on Conrad, and fell at the first brook. He survived by lying in the brook until all the horses had passed and later remarked how the experience had made him realise that “water tastes disgusting without the benefits of whisky.”

Becher sounded like quite a character – his party trick consisted of leaping onto a mantelpiece from a standing jump. Now that I’d have liked to see. Maybe he would have done better on the Brook without the horse?

We all know the Grand National is held at Aintree, which is charmingly described below as “…in the winter season not fit for the dwelling-place of a snipe possessing a sense of what is due to snipe-hood.”

But was it always at Aintree? This question throws up a surprising amount of confusion which I am going to try to unravel.

This little article from The Manchester Courier and Lancashire General Advertiser explains how the first three races didn’t count, although it doesn’t explain why. Here’s the first confused facts you’ll see in this post – the 1839 race was actually on 26th February, not 24th:

The Manchester Courier and Lancashire General Advertiser, 17th April, 1908

The first Steeplechase was in 1836, and held annually every year after that, and apparently all of them were called The Grand Liverpool Steeplechase until 1847. At that point, the name was changed to The Grand National Handicap Steeplechase, which is still its official title today. According to those who know, the 1836, 1837 and 1838 races originally counted as official races, but their status as official Grand Nationals was revoked at some point between 1862 and 1873. The official Grand National site states that this is because the race was originally run at the Maghull racecourse and moved to Aintree in 1839 – hence being essentially the same race from that point on, run on the same ground. But where the races were actually run from 1836 to 1838 are the subject of some dispute – Wikipedia says:

“There is much debate regarding the first official Grand National; most leading published historians, including John Pinfold, now prefer the idea that the first running was in 1836 and was won by The Duke. This same horse won again in 1837, while Sir William was the winner in 1838. These races have long been disregarded because of the belief that they took place at Maghull and not Aintree. However, some historians have unearthed evidence in recent years that suggest those three races were run over the same course at Aintree and were regarded as having been Grand Nationals up until the mid-1860s. To date, though, calls for the Nationals of 1836–1838 to be restored to the record books have been unsuccessful.”

The “some historians” include Mike Mutlow, whose site is possibly the definitive one on the subject – here. It seems to be now agreed that the 1836 race was at Aintree, but Mike says that 1837 and 1838 must have also been there, as the Maghull course closed in 1835. Which ties in with this note I found in The Dublin Evening Packet and Correspondent from the start of 1835:

The Dublin Evening Packet and Correspondent, 1st January, 1835

Mike writes:

“Why would so many mistakes creep into the records of the world’s greatest steeplechase? Basically because steeplechasing was not really recognised until the late 1860s, after the National Hunt Committee was formed in 1866. The records of the Grand National were then officially compiled, but from memory only, some thirty years after the event, which is when the mistakes first crept in. These errors were then duplicated….T.H.Bird’s book (One Hundred Grand Nationals) attempts to sidestep the issue by suggesting that the 1837 and 1838 races were run over a course that stretched from Aintree to Maghull, but this is geographically impossible.”

OK, my British Newspaper Archive finger is all atwitch. Let me add my findings to the debate. Looking at the newspapers, The Grand National was a sensation right from the start, and massively popular.

Firstly – it seems to be agreed now that it was in Aintree in 1836, and so it states in the Westmorland Gazette and Kendal Advertiser:

Westmorland Gazette and Kendal Advertiser, 5th March, 1836

But it’s still written in various places, including in in the official annals, that the 1837 and 1838 races were at Maghull. Well, not according to the Leeds Intelligencer in 1837:

Or the Manchester Courier and Lancashire General Advertiser, which also agrees it was at Aintree:

Manchester Courier and Lancashire General Advertiser, 4th March, 1837

The Preston Chronicle says it was run on the Aintree course in 1838:

The London Morning Post agrees and gives details about what the actual course was like, even stating “The line of country chosen was the same as that run over on former occasions of a similar nature at Aintree.”

The London Morning Post, 8th March, 1838

The information I’ve read says that date and place confusion arose in the 1860s when histories of the event were written for the first time, from memory, and that the previously accepted races of 1836-38 were discounted at this point because of a belief that they had been run at Maghull racetrack. But discrepancies and disagreements arose earlier than that. Most of what I could see seems to class the 1839 race as the first one almost as soon as it had been run. But not because the previously ones had been run at Maghull – there is no mention of any of them being run anywhere but Aintree. It seems to me it was for a different reason.

Here’s Lloyd’s Weekly London Newspaper mentioning the 5th anniversary in 1843 – making the first one 1839, and ignoring the first three.

Lloyd's Weekly London Newspaper, 5th March, 1843 — Lloyd’s Weekly London Newspaper, 5th March, 1843

And so also says The Coventry Standard. Perhaps it was promoted as the 5th anniversary specifically by the organisers of the time as there were numerous newspapers describing it as such.

But just to confuse things further, here’s an article about the 17th anniversary in 1853, making the first one 1837:

HOWEVER, in 1842 reporting was fairly widespread stating it was the 4th anniversary of the race since it gained the distinction of being called “national”, although the details in the different newspapers seem to come from the same report. So in 1839, the designation of “national” was bestowed for the first time, hence it being officially a “different race”:

The Southern Reporter and Cork Commercial Courier, 8th March, 1842

Cumberland Pacquet and Ware's Whitehaven Advertiser, 8th March, 1842 — Cumberland Pacquet and Ware’s Whitehaven Advertiser, 8th March, 1842

And indeed, the name may have officially changed to “Grand National” in 1847, but it’s called “national” for the first time in 1839, at least in some newspapers:

Bell's Life in London and Sporting Chronicle, 27th January, 1839 — Bell’s Life in London and Sporting Chronicle, 27th January, 1839

Bell's Life in London and Sporting Chronicle, 24th February, 1839 — Bell’s Life in London and Sporting Chronicle, 24th February, 1839

And in 1840, and beyond:

The London Morning Chronicle, 7th March, 1840

So, if its title and designation changed in 1839, it is justifiable that the races before that were not part of the history of the “Grand National”. But there is no reference that I can see in contemporary accounts to the 1837 and 1838 races being run at Maghull at all, and indeed the racetrack seems to have closed in 1835. It wasn’t in the 1860s that the history of the event changed, as far as I can see – it was right from the start.

But why was Maghull raised as a possibility at all? Here’s a couple of clues. In 1937 The Grand National, rather controversially, designated that year the centenary. Obviously at some later point, it officially changed its mind about that date and reverted to 1839. Why 1837? Because the 1837 race was the first one written on an old raceboard hanging in the stands at Aintree (1836 somehow fell through the gaps). It also said the race was at Maghull, which is possibly where all the confusion first arose. I suspect this scoreboard wasn’t written at the actual time of the race, otherwise why do all the newspaper accounts mention Aintree instead?

The Nottingham Evening Post, 17th March, 1937

And then this became a local urban legend, propagated by local farmers. Although in this case, perhaps it could be better called a “rural legend”. There was still dispute over this – many different farmers claimed the race was run over their fields, basically graffiti-ing “The Grand National woz ‘ere” over their walls:

Confusion reigns at the end of the day, but in matters of detail I tend to trust the contemporary accounts. Aintree was a newer course, and so I don’t think it would have just been assumed that the steeplechase would have been held there. Admittedly, the fact the two villages were not far from each other could have caused some kind of geographical confusion in the newspaper reports. But despite that, none I saw mentioned Maghull at all. That course had already closed down.

But despite the lack of “national” status (however that was bestowed), I feel the first three should count, they certainly are reported as being run over the same course after all. Give Captain Becher his due as the first Grand National winner! There’s such a poignant line from his obituary in The Lancashire Gazette – at his last public appearances “he was in his usual spirits but it was clear he had almost run his race.”

Finally, there’s nothing new under the sun and all that. Here’s a complaint about the race’s cruelty, way back at the time of the first official race, in 1839: