SPECTRALWhat happened here
According to the story, ships in the Strait of Malacca picked up a Morse distress call in 1947 or 1948: “All officers including captain are dead lying in chartroom and bridge. Possibly whole crew dead.” Then, after garbled code: “I die.”
The American freighter Silver Star is said to have found the Ourang Medan and sent a boarding party. They found the crew dead, faces frozen in terror and arms outstretched — even the ship's dog. Before the ship could be towed, smoke rose from the hold, and she exploded and sank.
The legends
Explanations have ranged from the supernatural to the military. Some say a malevolent force killed the crew; others that the ship was smuggling a secret cargo — nerve agents, potassium cyanide or nitroglycerine — whose fumes killed everyone aboard before the fire.
Carbon monoxide from a faulty boiler is another popular theory, and so is the idea that the whole affair was covered up.
Fact or legend?
No ship called Ourang Medan appears in the shipping registers of the period, and the details change from one retelling to the next. Most researchers believe the story was invented or wildly embellished — which has not stopped it becoming the world's most famous ghost-ship tale.
Visiting
There is nothing to visit: if the ship ever existed, she lies somewhere on the sea floor off Sumatra or Malaysia.
