Speaker 1: Hey guys, Steve here, you are listening to one of
Speaker 1: our original twenty six episodes. If you listen to any
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Speaker 1: mean a huge thanks to listener James for doing almost
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Speaker 1: don't understand. I'm you never know stories of things we
Speaker 1: simply don't know the answer too. Well. Hi there, and
Speaker 1: thanks again for joining the show. This is Thinking Sideways
Speaker 1: the podcast, and I am Steve, and as always, on
Speaker 1: my left is Joe. Hello everybody, and on my right
Speaker 1: is Devon h And we are going to once again
Speaker 1: review a story that doesn't quite have an answer. Now
Speaker 1: this week, we were lucky enough we are not alone
Speaker 1: in our review of the story. We were able to
Speaker 1: get ahold of the known author, Roy Bington. She was
Speaker 1: nice enough to talk with us about the story. But
Speaker 1: before we get to that, let's let's let Roy introduce himself. Well,
Speaker 1: my names Roy Benjon B A, I M. T O. N.
Speaker 1: And I'm a right to and a journalist and an author.
Speaker 1: But you've been doing for about seventeen years now. So
Speaker 1: this story the Ring mcdan is also commonly referred to
Speaker 1: as the death Ship like that. It's it's a creepy
Speaker 1: story and it's been around for a long long time time.
Speaker 1: This is one of those this stories been around since
Speaker 1: the late forties. This story was told by salty old
Speaker 1: dogs to to the young guys on the ships all
Speaker 1: the time. As as a matter of fact, that's how
Speaker 1: Roy heard it for the first time. Well, I've got
Speaker 1: to go back to the source. The first time I
Speaker 1: had it was actually verbally. I was on an old
Speaker 1: merchant ship called the the Port's Halifax and we were
Speaker 1: crossing from Panama to to Australia. This vessel used to
Speaker 1: travel at top speed of about twelve miles an hour.
Speaker 1: You know, and he used to take us three weeks
Speaker 1: to get from Panama to Australia. And on the night
Speaker 1: after the watch, we'd have a few beers in the
Speaker 1: mess room and people would tell stories, creepy stories about
Speaker 1: about the sea, etcetera. And I remember this one coming
Speaker 1: up because it really held the whole mess and we
Speaker 1: were all set around thinking, Jesus, what's this just for
Speaker 1: the benefit of our listeners, what exactly are the details
Speaker 1: of this interesting story? Well, I'm glad you asked, Joe.
Speaker 1: So here's the story. And we don't know if it's
Speaker 1: N seven or nine. But in the Straits of Malacca
Speaker 1: there was a radio transmission which picked up and it
Speaker 1: was in Morris code. So the radio transmission was picked
Speaker 1: up by several ships in the area as well as
Speaker 1: on land, and everybody that had picked it up they
Speaker 1: started talking to each other to try to figure it out,
Speaker 1: and they triangulated approximately where it was at and the
Speaker 1: closest ship was the Silver Star. So the Silver Star
Speaker 1: of course went to lend aid to the ship that
Speaker 1: is sending out a distress call. Now here's the creepy part.
Speaker 1: The first transmission says all officers including captain are dead,
Speaker 1: lying in chart room and ridge, possibly whole crew dead.
Speaker 1: And then a short time later, one more transmission is
Speaker 1: picked up and all it says is I die. So
Speaker 1: that's that's all there is in terms of actual transmissions
Speaker 1: from this ship, which is later comes to be discovered,
Speaker 1: according to the story, to be the out Ring Madan.
Speaker 1: You know, so that this is particularly creepy to me
Speaker 1: because of the phrasing of it. It implies that this
Speaker 1: person is not part of the crew, and I think
Speaker 1: that's not true. I think that it's probably just that
Speaker 1: you know, there it's not maybe English isn't the first language,
Speaker 1: or maybe I think it's the chain of command thing,
Speaker 1: you got to give things in rank and order. But
Speaker 1: it just seems like possibly whole crew. Yeah yeah, yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: but maybe met whole crew but me. But I remember,
Speaker 1: this is a story that's been told many times, and
Speaker 1: whoever the radio operator or operators were that wrote this down,
Speaker 1: none of us have None of us have access to
Speaker 1: that piece of paper they wrote the message. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: there might be some in precision there ship certainly the
Speaker 1: like I said before, the closest star, the closest ship
Speaker 1: is the Silver Star. So she goes to lend aid.
Speaker 1: And when the crew arrives, and I've seen again multiple accounts.
Speaker 1: Some say the sea was calm and she was gently floating.
Speaker 1: Some say the sea was rough and she was, you know,
Speaker 1: being batted around by the ocean under no power. But
Speaker 1: when they get to the ship and they discovered that
Speaker 1: it is, according to the accounts, the houring mcdan. So
Speaker 1: they came alongside and they boarded the ship. So that
Speaker 1: that lens creates the theory that there was probably a
Speaker 1: calm day if they were able to yeah, exactly. And
Speaker 1: that's that was one of the things that I went see.
Speaker 1: They was gonna ask you, is how exactly did they
Speaker 1: get aboard this thing? Yea, it happened had been a
Speaker 1: calmer at least calmer sees if nothing else. But then
Speaker 1: having lived on a ship, I can tell you it
Speaker 1: had to be pretty dang calm, okay something like. So
Speaker 1: they get aboard and this is when the creep factors
Speaker 1: starts to ratch it up. The entire crew is dead
Speaker 1: all over the ship. According to the accounts, the entire
Speaker 1: every crew member that they found was dead. And I
Speaker 1: believe the phraseology is in a rictus of fear, so
Speaker 1: their eyes are open, their hands are clawed, some of
Speaker 1: them have their mouths open, you know, staring at the
Speaker 1: skies as if they're screaming or scared to death of something.
Speaker 1: Even the ship's dog was frozen, and this rictus fear.
Speaker 1: So we we don't know exactly what's going on at
Speaker 1: this point. Now the Silver Star decides what we need
Speaker 1: to figure out what's going on, and we need to
Speaker 1: haul this ship back. And something's bad here, so they
Speaker 1: go to tire up and want to hauler back to port,
Speaker 1: at which point somebody realizes that there is spoke coming
Speaker 1: out of the hour Ring Madan. They cut the lines,
Speaker 1: they pull away as quick as they can. The ship
Speaker 1: explodes and sinks to the bottom. I feel like I
Speaker 1: remember an account saying like it was lifted out of
Speaker 1: the sea. It exploded so hard and like then just
Speaker 1: sank within a matter. I've seen that account before, and
Speaker 1: it's unclear. All we know is something happened and the
Speaker 1: ship blew up and sank to the bottom. So whatever happened,
Speaker 1: we have no way of knowing what that is. So
Speaker 1: that's the end of the ship. So one other and
Speaker 1: one and another telling of the story the crew of
Speaker 1: the Silver Star went below decks and looking for looking
Speaker 1: for anybody who was alive, went into an area not sure,
Speaker 1: I'm not clear if it was the hold or exactly
Speaker 1: where the machinery spaces, I don't know, but learning in
Speaker 1: an area and it was cold, according to their account,
Speaker 1: and then and then they came back above above decks
Speaker 1: and that's when fire started to break out. And in
Speaker 1: this telling of the story, there was no explosion, but
Speaker 1: essentially the fire sank the ship. It broke the back
Speaker 1: of the ship and the ship sank. So that's another
Speaker 1: telling of the story. And that telling of the story
Speaker 1: is out there as well. Yeah, so yeah, that's that's
Speaker 1: as much as the story itself has ever given us well,
Speaker 1: and it sounds like there are a lot of different
Speaker 1: versions of this story, and you're absolutely right, and it's
Speaker 1: it's been a story that again, like I said before,
Speaker 1: we can't pin down was seven was. It's been floating around, told,
Speaker 1: you know, word of mouth for many, many years, spending
Speaker 1: of course, people have been looking for the log books
Speaker 1: for the City of Baltimore and the Silver Star and
Speaker 1: they can't find them, or else they find them, and
Speaker 1: there's no mention of this incident in there. Well you know,
Speaker 1: and correct me if I'm wrong, But ships get renamed
Speaker 1: fairly frequently during this period of history, and they did so.
Speaker 1: The Silver Star in particular, who is said to have
Speaker 1: come to the aid of the Aluringmadan, was renamed shortly thereafter.
Speaker 1: Because this is after the war. Ships are being used
Speaker 1: and purchased and bought, and I believe the name it
Speaker 1: got renamed to the Santa juan Ea or San Juanita.
Speaker 1: They keep changing. And Lloyd's Registry, which if anybody doesn't know,
Speaker 1: Lloyd's Registry is basically the registry of all ships. So
Speaker 1: technically speaking, you should be able to find any ship
Speaker 1: and all of the evolutions of its names in that
Speaker 1: long and that's the problem that one of the initial
Speaker 1: problems that we'll get into later. But the Alring Macdon
Speaker 1: is not in there. It doesn't exist in that official
Speaker 1: record of all seafaring vessels. Interesting, but let's let's we'll
Speaker 1: come back to that because we got we'll get to
Speaker 1: that a little bit later. I want to, as we
Speaker 1: like to do, I want to I want to go
Speaker 1: through all the theories that are out there and then
Speaker 1: we can kind of hash them apart and we can
Speaker 1: work our way through them. So the very first one
Speaker 1: is akin to the Bermuda triangle. It was a u
Speaker 1: would huge. So people say, this is the theory that
Speaker 1: it was a UFO that came over the ship and
Speaker 1: killed the entire crew and then took off sound. Well
Speaker 1: that that doesn't explain why the ship blew up. That
Speaker 1: that doesn't give there's no there's nothing, there's no facts
Speaker 1: in there, There's nothing that a guy could hold on
Speaker 1: to to say, oh, well, there was this weird thing
Speaker 1: and then it happened. Like all we know is that
Speaker 1: they were dead. And and you know, I mean the
Speaker 1: UFO has swept them with the death ray. You would
Speaker 1: think the radio operator, but it would have been killed
Speaker 1: as fast as everybody else, Yeah, would have at the
Speaker 1: same time. Yeah, And I've got to admit, you know,
Speaker 1: when we talked to Roy, he had a really good
Speaker 1: take on this UFOs frightening people to death. Well, why
Speaker 1: haven't many other people been frightened to death by UFOs?
Speaker 1: We found streets full of people and the rich to
Speaker 1: Sophia lying on the pavement. You know, I don't think
Speaker 1: we have I'm not quite sure about that. You know,
Speaker 1: it was a possibility. There's some pretty bus as stories
Speaker 1: around the UFO phenomena. The next theory that's on the
Speaker 1: docket is that it didn't actually happen. There's a chance
Speaker 1: that this entire story was made up, like an old
Speaker 1: wives tale at old wives tale. I mean, if you
Speaker 1: think about it, it's the late forties. Guys have seen
Speaker 1: lots of weird stuff in the war, and maybe they've got,
Speaker 1: you know, some version of PTSD, and so they don't
Speaker 1: remember right what they saw, so they're reaccounting another story.
Speaker 1: But the way they're telling it captures everybody's attention, much
Speaker 1: like we heard, you know, when Roy was talking about
Speaker 1: how he had heard it, and it just sticks with you.
Speaker 1: And so the next time that creepy stories being told,
Speaker 1: you retell it. And it might very well be. It
Speaker 1: would be kind of funny if it might very well
Speaker 1: be that the guy who told the story on Roy's
Speaker 1: ship was actually the guy who made the whole thing up.
Speaker 1: And you know, might he might be, I don't know,
Speaker 1: And that's that's the that's the hard part is that
Speaker 1: there's no records. Like we talked about it earlier, is
Speaker 1: that you know, I said, there's there's no record of
Speaker 1: this ship anywhere. Well, I guess the thing for me
Speaker 1: is like when you think of ghost ship stories that
Speaker 1: are made up, they usually take it to the next
Speaker 1: extreme of like and it haunts the straits forevermore, killing
Speaker 1: other people's ship, you know, you know, And I understand
Speaker 1: like the impulse to say, well, you know, they were
Speaker 1: just being practical and they're in their fake right, But
Speaker 1: I just I generally think of if somebody's gonna fake it,
Speaker 1: they tend to go all the way. You're absolutely right,
Speaker 1: and a very well might have been made up. But
Speaker 1: there's one way to check, and that is to find
Speaker 1: the log books for the city of Baltimore and a
Speaker 1: Silver Star and look in there and see if there's
Speaker 1: any reference to this incident. You're right, and and there
Speaker 1: was an original text that supposedly where the story came from,
Speaker 1: which was in a publication from the U. S. Coast Guard.
Speaker 1: For a long long time, I mean, no, nobody's been
Speaker 1: able to find any records of the ship. And it's
Speaker 1: only through the dogged research of Roy that we found
Speaker 1: out about some of that stuff. The problem with the
Speaker 1: whole thing is were did its originally what the old
Speaker 1: guy who told me. It's c who was an old
Speaker 1: guy who had been in the North Atlantic in the
Speaker 1: U boat. Was you know, these were old guys who
Speaker 1: knew every corner of the oceans of the world. Where
Speaker 1: did he get it from? So according to Vincent Gaddis,
Speaker 1: it had been a press report. But I've searched the
Speaker 1: the newspaper library at Collingwood in North London looking for
Speaker 1: all reports of shipping from forty seven fortunate eight, and
Speaker 1: there's nothing masting the Orange Maerdan. I started then to think, well,
Speaker 1: maybe it's one of these kind of silly season stories
Speaker 1: where some high reporter thinks, I know what I'll do.
Speaker 1: I'll just cobble this story together and put it on
Speaker 1: the wires and everybody will go for it. But there
Speaker 1: was something mentioned in gud Us, a story about a
Speaker 1: report of the tragedy in the document called the Proceedings
Speaker 1: of the Merchant Marine Council, which is part of the
Speaker 1: publicity output for the US Coast Guard. Well, I could
Speaker 1: never find this and I didn't believe it existed. I
Speaker 1: thought Gaddis had made it up, But then recently a
Speaker 1: friend in Australia managed to track it down. Sadly, although
Speaker 1: it's an official report. It doesn't tell you anything more
Speaker 1: than we know. It doesn't tell you where the ship
Speaker 1: was from, where it was going, what porter had left.
Speaker 1: I would expect more thorough documentation in a document like that.
Speaker 1: There's nothing. It's just as if the legend has shoehorned
Speaker 1: itself into into that particular area, that official area, as
Speaker 1: if somebody and the Merchant Marine Council has said that
Speaker 1: we're a better stick this Storian. But of course there's
Speaker 1: now you would expect if you found the log book
Speaker 1: of the Silver Star, obviously to of Baltimore, which I've
Speaker 1: tried to do, you would expect that to be a
Speaker 1: report in the low book giving the actual latitude and
Speaker 1: longitude of this. Then you'll be able to pin it down.
Speaker 1: But no, it doesn't. That doesn't happen either. I've written
Speaker 1: to various sources trying to find out why the log
Speaker 1: books might be. Of course, most of the companies that
Speaker 1: we're running at that time, and it's just after the
Speaker 1: Second World War, a lot of that documentation is probably
Speaker 1: filed away in some floor in some buildings somewhere in
Speaker 1: Boston and New York. We don't know. So I did
Speaker 1: a huge a lot of research into the Philadelphia experiment,
Speaker 1: you know, like you know, making a ship invisible lovely idea,
Speaker 1: you know, but there's there's a good explanation for all
Speaker 1: of it. But it's a fantastic story. I have a
Speaker 1: horrible feeling that that's what makes me think you around
Speaker 1: Madan might be a red herring. I don't know, there's
Speaker 1: something behind it. So obviously enough, the trail is cold.
Speaker 1: There's not a lot of paperwork on the ship its
Speaker 1: self that can be found at that point, which is
Speaker 1: kind of weird. Again. Yeah, it's it's odd that there's
Speaker 1: just so little, and we were lucky enough I had
Speaker 1: gone ahead and when I was doing my research, and
Speaker 1: this is why we got ahold of Roys. He was
Speaker 1: the only one who seemed to have done a lot
Speaker 1: of research on it, and he put forward a theory
Speaker 1: which I have not really found anywhere else, that seems
Speaker 1: pretty plausible and has done the legwork that I think
Speaker 1: it lends in credence to maybe possibly being it all right,
Speaker 1: then received a communication we seemed rather road from Germany
Speaker 1: on very cranky, old typewritten envelope, and it was from
Speaker 1: a wonderful guy who I got to be very friendly
Speaker 1: with that he's died now, but it's an actual professor
Speaker 1: of marine architecture called theatle sized door for and Theodore
Speaker 1: had been on the track of the around Madon for
Speaker 1: forty years, ever since the story broke, and he sent
Speaker 1: me a photo copy of a thirty two page leaflet
Speaker 1: which was in German by a guy called Otto Milky
Speaker 1: m I E l k E. And this was from
Speaker 1: and it was called us Total Shift under soot See,
Speaker 1: which is the death ship of the Southern Seas. And
Speaker 1: this was the Germans. I got the main parts of
Speaker 1: it translated, and I thought, who is Otto Milky? And
Speaker 1: I found out that the guy actually was a German
Speaker 1: emy grave but he was actually living in my hometown
Speaker 1: up in Hall in Yorkshire. So I went to look
Speaker 1: for him and found out he died. So he was dead.
Speaker 1: But he raised some interesting points about the death of
Speaker 1: these sailors on the around Madan. That they could have
Speaker 1: been carrying poison gases such as zayan carli which is
Speaker 1: potassium cyanide and possibly explaining the explosion nitro glycering. Now
Speaker 1: this if they had such a mixture on board, how
Speaker 1: it would have gone and recorded is a mystery. But
Speaker 1: you know, even fifty years ago, this would have ensured
Speaker 1: reams and reams of paperwork to get this kind of
Speaker 1: a cargo going. But if you think of the situation
Speaker 1: which the Dutch had with their East Indies Empire after
Speaker 1: the Second World War, they were trying to re establish
Speaker 1: their foothold after the Japanese had been ejected from that
Speaker 1: part of the world, and they had a lot to face.
Speaker 1: Although the Japanese had gone, communist insurgency had sprung up
Speaker 1: in their place, and there was a terrific battle, what
Speaker 1: a lot of unpleasant imperialist genocide going on over there.
Speaker 1: We could be talking about the Orangeadan if it existed
Speaker 1: carrying a cargo of poison gas for use in this
Speaker 1: campaign against the people who did not want the Dutch
Speaker 1: to come back. You know, that's always a possibility, and
Speaker 1: I have actually there is a possibility that you know,
Speaker 1: if this was an accident on board the ship and
Speaker 1: they were carrying an unsecured hazardous materials, there could have
Speaker 1: been any kind of poisoning. You know, I looked into
Speaker 1: other areas of what could have happened. Now if this
Speaker 1: vessel was carrying poison gases, for use in a military campaign,
Speaker 1: gases which were banned by international law, and gases which
Speaker 1: would not have got a manifest as a cargo from
Speaker 1: any shipping authority. Then it could have been a very
Speaker 1: early example of what you guys called black op. Now
Speaker 1: after the war, if you look at the records, and
Speaker 1: this is where professors Sears Dover helped me immensely. Literally
Speaker 1: dozens and dozens of German cargo ships or actually taken
Speaker 1: over by the Allies, especially the British, for one particular reason,
Speaker 1: and that was to dispose of poison gases which the
Speaker 1: Nazis had manufactured. And these ships and I have a
Speaker 1: list of all the ships, the tonnages, and I know
Speaker 1: where they've all been sank. They were taken out by
Speaker 1: volunteer crews. They were loaded to the to the decks
Speaker 1: which sarin tabne mustard gas and they were just sunk
Speaker 1: by opening the sea cocks or detonating a charge. Um.
Speaker 1: These ships are actually lying on the bottom of the
Speaker 1: let'll see the Atlantic, the Baltic, all over the place, Okay,
Speaker 1: And that makes a lot of sense. It wouldn't be
Speaker 1: that tough to take one of those things. Paying a
Speaker 1: new name on his bow and then send it off,
Speaker 1: you know, send it off somewhere if you think that
Speaker 1: somebody somewhere needs some poison gas, or maybe somebody made
Speaker 1: you an offer you couldn't refuse, or maybe you just
Speaker 1: wanted to make some money, or you wanted to get
Speaker 1: rid of it and you didn't want it to be
Speaker 1: able to get tracks to its original name. There's every
Speaker 1: one of these is plausible. There's if if royce theory
Speaker 1: is correct, and that they were packing these illegal substances
Speaker 1: to to just scuttle it or to sell it or whatever,
Speaker 1: and something went wrong, there's a there's a whole host
Speaker 1: of reasons why that name could have just been made
Speaker 1: up as you, as he said when we were talking
Speaker 1: to him, somebody could have just leaned over the side,
Speaker 1: taking a paintbrush and just painted a new name on it.
Speaker 1: And absolutely, and if you're yeah, if you're going up
Speaker 1: on some little special trips somewhere that you don't want
Speaker 1: to you know, I don't want to have a high
Speaker 1: profile or anything like that, you leave, you leave port,
Speaker 1: then you paint your name a new name over the
Speaker 1: top of the old name, and then later on, you know,
Speaker 1: change it back. Yeah, and you know another hypothesis that
Speaker 1: I should have came up with just now, you know,
Speaker 1: but I like to speculate, and it's of course pure speculation,
Speaker 1: of course, But in this hypothesis, the distress called did
Speaker 1: not actually originate with the Orangemudon. It originated with another ship.
Speaker 1: So now imagine that. Imagine the Orangemudon had some cargo,
Speaker 1: whether it's poison gas or or just ordinary munitions or whatever,
Speaker 1: that you don't want to see arriving at its destination.
Speaker 1: And you don't have a navy to speak of, so
Speaker 1: you can't send a battleship out and board it or
Speaker 1: sink it or whatever. You've got to find a way
Speaker 1: to get on that ship. So if you know where
Speaker 1: it's going, and for example, you know it's going to
Speaker 1: be going through the Straits of Malacca, because I mean basically,
Speaker 1: if you're in the Pacific and you're saying heading over
Speaker 1: towards India or the Mediterranean, whatever, you pretty much have
Speaker 1: to go through the Straits of Malacca. A lot of
Speaker 1: the world shipping goes through there. So supposing you know
Speaker 1: when at lease ports, so you know roughly at speed,
Speaker 1: you know when it's going to be in the straits.
Speaker 1: If you have, say, afraid of yourself, than what you
Speaker 1: can do is wait until it's reasonably close by the
Speaker 1: closest ship there is, send out your distress call, and
Speaker 1: then they come alongside. Like your ship which is sitting
Speaker 1: there dead in the water. Now it's got stuff on it,
Speaker 1: it's got maybe explosives, maybe poison gas. You don't really
Speaker 1: want to have a firefight with these guys, So what
Speaker 1: you do is, as they're pulling alongside, you just release
Speaker 1: a lot of invisible toxic gas sarah and mustard gas whatever.
Speaker 1: As they're pulling alongside to render aid. You basically gass them,
Speaker 1: which is a nasty way to do some business. Is
Speaker 1: a nasty way to do it. But if you know,
Speaker 1: for whatever reason, you don't want to have a firefight
Speaker 1: with these guys, then gassing them as the next best solution.
Speaker 1: Then you then you know you've got your gas masks
Speaker 1: on already, of course, so you hop aboard and go
Speaker 1: to go down below decks, lance them incendy areas with timers, uh,
Speaker 1: and then you leave, and of course you're you're stress
Speaker 1: call has been picked up by either ships in the area.
Speaker 1: So eventually some of the ships show up and they're
Speaker 1: in time to witness the dead crew and then to
Speaker 1: see the ship, you know, catch fire and then blow up.
Speaker 1: This lends credence to the idea that there may have
Speaker 1: been explosives for perhaps artillery shells or things like that.
Speaker 1: And the one problem is that it is okay, so
Speaker 1: again it's DoD They just blatantly faked the name on
Speaker 1: the ship because again it's that name is not able
Speaker 1: to be pinned down anyway. That's the hard part. I
Speaker 1: like where you're going, and there's p there's plausibility in that.
Speaker 1: I also remember that they did find the operator, the
Speaker 1: telegram operator, dead at his post having sent those messages,
Speaker 1: didn't they when they boarded the ship. That's what the
Speaker 1: story says, although to be fair it is Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: just that is a sixty plus year old story that
Speaker 1: you know, some guy could have said, and they found
Speaker 1: those sparks dead at his station. Yeah, you just don't know, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know. And there are so many things with this thing,
Speaker 1: right that you just don't know. I mean, okay, toxic
Speaker 1: gases fine, but like how many toxic gases like actually
Speaker 1: kill someone fast enough to have a rigor of fear?
Speaker 1: Just like, yeah, and how do you that blow decks?
Speaker 1: That's the hard part. If they're just pulling alongside and
Speaker 1: you're gassing them, how do you get it blow decks? Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, that's a good question. I don't know. And
Speaker 1: again we don't know. I presume that you pick something
Speaker 1: that's heavier than air and if you send a massive
Speaker 1: enough cloud of it over there. It's just there's so
Speaker 1: many different questions. Yeah, and I don't I don't know
Speaker 1: what the I don't know what the you know, this
Speaker 1: would be a sailor question. But say say, for example,
Speaker 1: you do pick up a distress call from another ship.
Speaker 1: You know, you've been at sea for weeks, nothing about
Speaker 1: interesting has happened. Now suddenly you know you're coming alongside
Speaker 1: some ship that's in distress, and of course you're hoping
Speaker 1: it gets hoped that maybe this will be a nice
Speaker 1: ghost ship and you have a great story for your grandkids,
Speaker 1: you know. So maybe the entire crew was up on
Speaker 1: deck for this, this whole event, that to come and
Speaker 1: see the ship that was that was reporting that everybody
Speaker 1: is dead. But the end, what they didn't realize is
Speaker 1: they were gonna be the ones that are gonna every Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's true. Yeah. The people I'm thinking about, is
Speaker 1: this happened eight. I'm thinking about the the Israelis. You know,
Speaker 1: as you know, the UN partition Palestine in seven war
Speaker 1: immediately broke out between Israel and the Arabs. The state
Speaker 1: of Israel was created in ninety eight. And the Israelis
Speaker 1: have a history of a very very clever and very
Speaker 1: effective solutions to problems. So if they did indeed intercept
Speaker 1: an arms shipment, that could be one cute and that
Speaker 1: could be one way to do it without shooting, without
Speaker 1: without firing a shot, just gas, the crew plants some
Speaker 1: bombs leave. It's entirely possible. That's entirely possible. And as
Speaker 1: far as the name change goes, uh, you know, it
Speaker 1: might have been one of those things to change the
Speaker 1: name of the ship in transit, just to make it
Speaker 1: harder to track you. So you pop, you pop out
Speaker 1: of one port, you change your name, and whatever ports
Speaker 1: you stop in, nobody can. Nobody can really track you
Speaker 1: because you know, they don't know this Ramadan ship, so
Speaker 1: it makes it harder to track. Well, let's let's move
Speaker 1: to the next theory. Yeah, okay, So the next theory
Speaker 1: is that there was nothing foul or defarious that happened,
Speaker 1: but it was a simple mechanical failure. And by that
Speaker 1: I mean a boiler room fire shifts. At this time,
Speaker 1: a lot of them ran on coal. So if the
Speaker 1: boiler itself is malfunctioning, and you know, those ships burn
Speaker 1: massive amounts of coal to create their propulsion, it's gonna
Speaker 1: be pumping out a lot of c O two. C
Speaker 1: O two is heavier than air, So of course, what's
Speaker 1: that mean is that if a fire breaks out and
Speaker 1: they don't realize it right away, the whole of the
Speaker 1: ship is first going to start filling with c O two,
Speaker 1: which is going to smother all crew members as the
Speaker 1: gas rises up because of the volume, until it's at
Speaker 1: a great volume that spills out the top, which would
Speaker 1: then suffocate all the crew members, which dying from from
Speaker 1: that kind of assixiation is not a pleasant way to go,
Speaker 1: And that would explain the the supposed expressions on the
Speaker 1: people's face. You know, if you think about it, and
Speaker 1: you're dying, you're gasping for air, you're gonna have a
Speaker 1: very panic look on your face when you finally go. Probably, yeah,
Speaker 1: I just I don't know. I don't totally know the
Speaker 1: science behind. If you're standing on like an open air
Speaker 1: deck of a ship, you're right. And and the thing
Speaker 1: that I was gonna say is, if we think about it,
Speaker 1: that area of the world that it was supposed to
Speaker 1: happen in is a very hot tropical area, which means
Speaker 1: they would probably have windows and ports open to get
Speaker 1: any kind of airflow possible to breathe. And also it
Speaker 1: probably depends on how windy it is. If it was
Speaker 1: a very windless day, and then you know, it could
Speaker 1: have been that this cloud of CEO two or carbon
Speaker 1: monoxide or whatever didn't didn't clear away quickly. Supposing it's
Speaker 1: a totally clear day, Um, they could have windows. But
Speaker 1: you know, I believe it's portholes. Portholes um. You know,
Speaker 1: modern day ships don't have that pass you know, like
Speaker 1: lower than like the fifth or sixth deck, that open
Speaker 1: um simply, you know, because a ship it rolls and
Speaker 1: you know it's on the sea and you have waves
Speaker 1: and splashes, and you don't want water on the inside
Speaker 1: of your ship at all, like periods it's bad news. Um.
Speaker 1: So in most of the time, a ship, unless it's
Speaker 1: like a cruise line or something just isn't going to
Speaker 1: have windows. They're just knocked on. I mean, they might
Speaker 1: have a couple like in a captain's hold, like up
Speaker 1: near the top decks or something like very good point,
Speaker 1: but they are kind of weak points where they're weak points.
Speaker 1: And those ships are basically just like slap a couple
Speaker 1: of pieces of steel together, and he's got a ship. Well,
Speaker 1: and so here's if we follow this theory down his trail.
Speaker 1: He's that then of course, once it's killed the crew,
Speaker 1: this carbon monoxide poisoning, at that point the aid would arrive.
Speaker 1: They would then realize that there was smoke happening, and
Speaker 1: that boiler room fire is then what would have made
Speaker 1: the ship catch fire and explode and sink to the bottom. Okay,
Speaker 1: and then I guess I have another problem with this
Speaker 1: is that how quickly could the ships have responded? Right,
Speaker 1: you assume that this ship has been out for hours
Speaker 1: at least, and I don't know, you know, I don't
Speaker 1: think we have the information on distance between the ships
Speaker 1: that were responding and alright, madana or anything like that,
Speaker 1: you know, but a fire for hours. Again, I'll say,
Speaker 1: having lived on a ship, I understand that even ships
Speaker 1: made to be fire resistant. An hour of a fire
Speaker 1: of the magnitude that could produce that much poison air
Speaker 1: is not going to allow a ship to stay afloat
Speaker 1: for then Yeah, it's not out, but then the ship
Speaker 1: is probably already sunk. Yeah, very true. Well it's conceivable
Speaker 1: that you know, one of the one of the keys
Speaker 1: to fighting fires on ships is to shut the shut
Speaker 1: that say, if it's below decks, evacuate personnel, shut the hatches,
Speaker 1: and turn and turn the diesels on it. They're not already,
Speaker 1: that's exactly what you do. You try and starve the fire. However,
Speaker 1: in that situation, if you expose, if if the fire
Speaker 1: is not out, well exactly, somebody in the door, and
Speaker 1: you get what I don't remember what they call it
Speaker 1: the technical term, but you basically get this like fire
Speaker 1: explosion happening out background. Yes, back to exactly. So you
Speaker 1: would not then be able to like fully evacuate the
Speaker 1: ship and have it explode with all of your crew
Speaker 1: back on the ship. Right, it's a very backlash is
Speaker 1: a really quick thing. That Okay, so but that could
Speaker 1: be let's let's let's say that the initial crew had
Speaker 1: tried to contain it and had been killed in that process,
Speaker 1: and they had bottled the ship up with the intention
Speaker 1: of killing the fire, but of course they still all die.
Speaker 1: And then the responding the rescue ship arrives and not
Speaker 1: knowing what's happening, they open a couple of doors that
Speaker 1: don't necessarily allow a huge backdraft happen. But suddenly they
Speaker 1: allow the fire to get fuel again. Then then then
Speaker 1: that's a possibility. I guess that's true. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: it's my understanding of this explosion that happens, that it
Speaker 1: happens pretty immediately. But it's true that if they recording
Speaker 1: the movie that they made back in the nineties, it's
Speaker 1: super fast and vicious. It's hard to say none of
Speaker 1: us have had to experience that stories, but yeah, they
Speaker 1: only don't know. Yeah, the only problem I have with
Speaker 1: the fires, the whole fire theory, is that the the
Speaker 1: radio operator, I think would have mentioned that there was
Speaker 1: a fire on the ship. You think that it wouldn't
Speaker 1: have been like some mysterious doug they think people are
Speaker 1: all dead. Oh now, I dot you know, And so
Speaker 1: let's let's continue on to the next theory that also
Speaker 1: deals with gas, okay, and that is methane gas and this,
Speaker 1: I admit, is kind of a far flung theory. I
Speaker 1: haven't farfetched farfetched, thank you. I haven't found a lot
Speaker 1: of places that this is reference, and personally it doesn't
Speaker 1: hold a lot of ground for me, but we'll go
Speaker 1: over it. So the theory is is, of course, that
Speaker 1: on the ocean floor there are there's volcanic activity, and
Speaker 1: there's pockets of all kinds of stuff trapped in the earth.
Speaker 1: This theory says that the hour Ing m Dan was
Speaker 1: unfortunate enough to be in the wrong place at the
Speaker 1: wrong time when there was some kind of seismic activity
Speaker 1: and a massive pocket of methane gas was released. So
Speaker 1: run with me on this. This this is a little
Speaker 1: hard to track with, but this is this giant release
Speaker 1: of gas comes boiling out of the ocean, surrounds the
Speaker 1: ship as it's all being released, and of course the
Speaker 1: methane is going to push all the oxygen out, which
Speaker 1: is then in turn gonna kill all of the crew
Speaker 1: members because you can't breathe that gas. It doesn't explain
Speaker 1: the explosion, but it explains potentially how the crew could
Speaker 1: have died. But if we go back to the boiler
Speaker 1: room issue, let's say the crew is suddenly dead and
Speaker 1: the boilers running hot and it's left unmanned. Then maybe that,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe these two theories come together. But I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't put a lot of stock in it. But
Speaker 1: it's something that's out there. Yeah, I think these things happen.
Speaker 1: I think we have to kind of acoms razor this
Speaker 1: right that I think too, like really unlikely events coming together.
Speaker 1: You would think that some you know, when that that
Speaker 1: method is rising out of the ocean, there's some some
Speaker 1: crew member or a no that would have lit a
Speaker 1: smoke and you know that would have touched the entire
Speaker 1: cloud off. Yeah, you would think the boiler, right, the boiler. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I don't. I don't hold a lot of stock
Speaker 1: in that one. Yeah, I I freely admit that. Uh So,
Speaker 1: the last theory that we have is again an unusual take,
Speaker 1: but a very interesting one, and this is Yamashita is gold.
Speaker 1: Oh so roy is the one who told us this theory.
Speaker 1: So let's let's have him tell us how that possibility
Speaker 1: could have run That there is another possibility that this
Speaker 1: could be parts of Yamashita's gold. Are you familiar with
Speaker 1: Yamashita's gold? No, yeah, I have. I've already heard about
Speaker 1: yams gold. Gold is like the accumulated gold Ingot's jewelry
Speaker 1: coinage and similar precious and semi precious articles which were
Speaker 1: collected from all the official storages, banks, minds, churches and temples,
Speaker 1: from all the inhabitants of all the Southeast Asian countries
Speaker 1: by the invading Japanese. It's the same thing that the
Speaker 1: Nazis did in Europe, you know, right with the conquerors
Speaker 1: will have anything we want. And whereas the Nazis put
Speaker 1: everything into Swiss banks and then transferred it to South
Speaker 1: America after the war under himless instructions, and then five
Speaker 1: years after the war died down, all the German industrialists
Speaker 1: brought the money back into the country and you have
Speaker 1: the great economic recovery with the Japanese a lot of
Speaker 1: their gold they had to leave too quickly. So whilst
Speaker 1: the quantity and the value can only be guessed, that
Speaker 1: it is known to have been a considerable amount of money,
Speaker 1: and it was all assembled apparently in Singapore same time
Speaker 1: they were assembling original aus gases. Now let's suppose, for instance,
Speaker 1: if we're talking about black ops, let's suppose that the
Speaker 1: Haranguema Dan was floating full of Yamashita's gold and it
Speaker 1: was intercepted by these two ships and then blown up
Speaker 1: and sank with this wonderful, spooky cover story. You know,
Speaker 1: it's it's a far out idea, I admit, but it's
Speaker 1: you know, it's one. As many solutions as you can
Speaker 1: think of, you can just add to them, and somewhere
Speaker 1: in those lists of solutions is the answer. But we
Speaker 1: don't know what it is because the ship has been
Speaker 1: wiped out the pages of history. It's it's not there,
Speaker 1: and we are now out of theories. Yes, okay, so
Speaker 1: we've we've gone through quite a few theories and a
Speaker 1: lot of research that still kind of runs us into
Speaker 1: dead ends. And that's all we've got. So this, I
Speaker 1: mean again, it's it could be a black op. It
Speaker 1: could be a red herring. It could be some kind
Speaker 1: of fire, it could be some kind of hijacking with
Speaker 1: the gold. It could be totally made up, totally made up.
Speaker 1: I'm kind of leaning towards that, I to admit it.
Speaker 1: I agree with Joe talking to Roy, who is you know,
Speaker 1: Mr Baby has done a ton and ton of leg
Speaker 1: work over a long amount of time. He really has,
Speaker 1: and he does this stuff constantly, and I've got to say,
Speaker 1: if I had my to just give it a face value.
Speaker 1: When I first saw this, I didn't know. But after
Speaker 1: getting all of the facts, I personally I hate to
Speaker 1: say it. I think I think it's fake. Very well
Speaker 1: could be. But hey, let's you know, we'll leave it
Speaker 1: up to our listeners own take on it. Everybody sees something.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know what you think on this one,
Speaker 1: you know, and I think I think a face it's
Speaker 1: probably fake. I think it's interesting. There are just enough
Speaker 1: records for this to be a true mystery, right. It's plausible.
Speaker 1: You know, it was in this article in a fairly
Speaker 1: reputable source of the US Coast Guard. This story. You know,
Speaker 1: you would kind of think that if this were just
Speaker 1: a fake, they wouldn't run something like that, And that
Speaker 1: was the April Fools issue. But you know, there's something
Speaker 1: to be said for like a story that's repeated so
Speaker 1: many times under the guise of being true that people
Speaker 1: just say, oh, it's true. So I guess we'd better
Speaker 1: get on top of it. I believe the phrase that
Speaker 1: we heard in the interview was it shoehorned itself, which
Speaker 1: is a great way to put it. Yeah. So, but
Speaker 1: I you know, I understand the impulse to say it's fake,
Speaker 1: but I like, I like to root for like the Thunderdog.
Speaker 1: I really want to say that it's real, that we
Speaker 1: just don't know. I think that that something is being suppressed,
Speaker 1: that it was during the war, right after the war,
Speaker 1: and probably somebody among our listeners are millions of listeners
Speaker 1: was involved in this operation. If it was indeed a
Speaker 1: black op, it wasn't a black op. Maybe maybe your
Speaker 1: grandfather was on the Silver Star. So you know, please
Speaker 1: contact us. Yeah, I'd also I'd also like to put
Speaker 1: it out to our listeners to We want you all
Speaker 1: to go to our website and leave us a comment
Speaker 1: and tell us what your favorite theory is. Don't you
Speaker 1: think that's fair. I think we should listen to our listeners. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I think that people there as we We've
Speaker 1: covered a bunch of theories, and you know, these are
Speaker 1: pretty much just the most viable theories. I'm sure there
Speaker 1: are many many there, and again I haven't even I'm
Speaker 1: so torn. I'm really torn on this because so many
Speaker 1: things seemed plausible and it seems like it should be real.
Speaker 1: And then this is this is why I have to admit, guys,
Speaker 1: this is the first story that we've talked about where
Speaker 1: I've thrown up my hands and said that's it. I
Speaker 1: I'm not sure that I believe anymore. Yeah, you know.
Speaker 1: And that's that's really an interesting point. You know. We've
Speaker 1: talked about some stories where it's like, well, obviously I
Speaker 1: feel like this person is faking it, or the story
Speaker 1: has these really mundane origins and have just has just
Speaker 1: been built up. But I think this one, in particular,
Speaker 1: there's so much yeah, here's it's really easy to say, wow,
Speaker 1: who knows, you know, It's so easy to say it's
Speaker 1: just an old wives tale, And then it's very easy
Speaker 1: to imagine that people of as we said, she hoorned
Speaker 1: this into the history books or not based on whatever,
Speaker 1: you know. I think that Roy said that he got
Speaker 1: a letter from the Dutch Navy saying, uh, we hear
Speaker 1: you know a lot about the oreto with Dan. We
Speaker 1: would like to know what you know, please, uh you know,
Speaker 1: and it was I think that's really indicative of this story.
Speaker 1: It's that and that that it just is perfect because
Speaker 1: either it's the Navy saying okay, we need to know
Speaker 1: if we need to like off this guy or it's
Speaker 1: the Navy saying, Okay, this guy's presenting these this story
Speaker 1: in a really straightforward, a believable way, and we don't
Speaker 1: know about it, you know, so it's well, yeah, they
Speaker 1: wanted to find out if it was true too. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's like, you know, you call our story about the
Speaker 1: Glomar explorer. Yeah, and they came up with a fictitious
Speaker 1: story that Hughes Corporation was going to mind manganese modules
Speaker 1: from the ocean floor, which was a story that's just
Speaker 1: part of the cover story and the cover side of it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just just a cover story. And uh and and and
Speaker 1: they actually they actually publicized it and talked it up
Speaker 1: quite a bit, to the point that a couple of
Speaker 1: other companies actually started investing huge amounts of money and
Speaker 1: doing the same thing. I mean, they really got punked
Speaker 1: by this. That all this bs and it happens to
Speaker 1: all kinds of people. That happens to news organizations and
Speaker 1: governments and everything. Yeah, I don't know, ladies and gentlemen,
Speaker 1: if you have your own theories on this, we would
Speaker 1: love to hear about them. You can always go to
Speaker 1: our website, which is Thinking Sideways podcast dot com. Uh,
Speaker 1: feel free to leave comments on this or any of
Speaker 1: the stories that's on there. We we love to hear
Speaker 1: where the listeners have to say and what our thoughts
Speaker 1: are on the stellary. Tell us what your favorite theory is.
Speaker 1: We want to hear it. Yeah, you can't always go
Speaker 1: ahead if you want. If you you prefer to just
Speaker 1: chat with us directly because we love doing that as well.
Speaker 1: Is get ahold of us via email, So you can
Speaker 1: send us an email at Thinking Sideways Podcast at gmail
Speaker 1: dot com. And we've gotten emails before and we've corresponded
Speaker 1: with folks back and forth, and we love to do that.
Speaker 1: We loved about these things around. So if you've got
Speaker 1: you've got something in there, and if you've got a
Speaker 1: theory that's in there that we haven't done before, let
Speaker 1: us know and and we will go over in her. Heck,
Speaker 1: if you know a story that we haven't done and
Speaker 1: you'd like to hear us do I would absolutely love
Speaker 1: to hear from you because we have gotten some good
Speaker 1: stories in the past and I know we're going to
Speaker 1: get some good ones in the future. Yeah. With that
Speaker 1: that said, ladies and gentlemen, this ship has sailed and
Speaker 1: we're gonna wrap this one up for the night. So
Speaker 1: thank you for for taking a time to to listen
Speaker 1: to us again. We do want to give a big
Speaker 1: shout out to Roy Baton. Roy, thank you so much
Speaker 1: for chatting with us. You really really helped us out
Speaker 1: and we appreciate it and we look forward to to
Speaker 1: chatting with Roy again in the future. I absolutely have
Speaker 1: to make that happen again. Absolutely, it was a pleasure
Speaker 1: talking to you, Roy. And by the way, after you
Speaker 1: hear the episode and you hear my outline ish new theory,
Speaker 1: just give me a call. I'm dying of all right,
Speaker 1: ladies and gentlemen, thank you again and we will talk
Speaker 1: to you next week.