A distress call was sent by the stricken freight ship to which two other ships responded. The distress call ended suddenly. When found, the crew was in a variety of distressed poses staring fixedly. The dog died suddenly on the deck in a strange position. The rescue crew had to leave suddenly because of an explosion which sunk the ship. The ship’s identity is not in any registry. Hard facts and records are hard to come by. The sinking has two dates…strangely…June 1947 and February 1948.

The area the ship was in was the Strait of Malacca in Borneo. The area was a dutch colony in the throes of a colonial war that included the communists against Holland which was a NATO ally. The area had been under Japanese control until 1945.

The Japanese had a long history of Chem-Bio War (CBW) weapons development and had used both chemicals and bio agents against China during the war. A dutch admiralty report gotten with some difficulty over the web shows that particular area suffered mine infestation and heavy military activity in 1948.

Another ship, the MV Soegio, formerly the British transport ministry ship Empire Betsy exploded and sank in the Straits of Macassar in February 1948 at a known location. The ship was leased to a vague Dutch oil company which is untraceable except for its name. Macassar is a name that could easily be confused with many others in the area including Malacca.

Britain was a dutch ally and was faced with colonial struggles of its own after WW2. Communist lead movements allied with independence forces threatened the dying British Empire in 1948. Independence was a Cold War issue in the context of communism.

Possible Conclusions and Open Questions:

Was the MV Soegio in fact the real SS Ourang Medan? The name Ourang Medan is is fact a generic description and likely a fake name. The false identity would serve many purposes: it would hide the bureaucratic paper trail of death claims and goods insurance proceeds from the eyes of the media by shifting attention to a ship that could not be traced.

False cover stories “plausible deniability” is a common practice with the CIA who frequently used the bogus “Atlas Steamship Company” to hide clandestine shipments from media attention and later “Air America.” The small Dutch oil (chemical company?) didn’t seem to be in business very long…why was that? Why two dates for an objective event? A CBW accident would lead to legal proceedings related to illegal CBW warfare against dutch colonials which would be rich fodder for the Soviets.

Has anybody gone to the wreck site? Of course not, since the story is vague enough to deny any specific location information. The wreck of the MV Soegio may be an interesting place as I suggested to “Treasure Quest” who told me that a wreck had to have economic value to offset the cost of a TV show.

What do the records of the MV Soegio show? Were there many British government employees on the ship as “contractors” of the oil company? Have the records of the MV Soegio disappeared as so many others have? Was the explosion that sank the MV Soegio a mine or an emergency charge set to go off in an accident to cover up any illegal CBW weapons? Is there any record or recollection of CBW war in colonial Indonesia?