# Ourang Medan — Trove / Papers Past / NewspaperSG (+ Pacific Islands Monthly, KB-Delpher Indies press) research report

Companion file: `sources/search-logs/newspapersg_digitalnz_search_log.md` (every query + hit count). Working copies of the per-article files (`articles/`, URL at top), the OCR of the Dutch/Indies items (`kb/`), the NLB clipping images (`clips/`, PNG), the raw search HTML/JSON (`sg_raw/`), the 192 Pacific Islands Monthly issues (`pim/`, full OCR) and the Papers Past/Evening Post 1940 battery (`pp_1940_battery.txt`) are not included in this folder.

## 1. Bottom line

1. **No contemporary (1940 or 1947–48) report of an "Ourang Medan" / "Orang Medan" exists in NewspaperSG** (Straits Times, Singapore Free Press, Malaya Tribune, Morning Tribune, Sunday Tribune, Straits Budget, Pinang Gazette, etc.). Full-text OCR search for `"ourang medan"` returns **3 hits, all from 2022** (Straits Times "Unsolved mysteries of South-east Asia" series). The word "ourang" alone gives 48 hits 1844–2022, **none between 1940 and 1949**, none relevant before 2022. Searches for "Ourang" in 1940–1949 alone: **"No records found"**.
2. **No ship named "Silver Star" appears in the Singapore/Malayan press in 1947–48.** `"silver star"` 1947–48 gives 278 hits, every one a racehorse (Singapore/Penang/Selangor race cards), the US Silver Star decoration, or similar; zero in a shipping context; `"s.s. silver star"`, `"silver star" steamer/freighter/vessel/tanker` = 0. `"City of Baltimore"` 1947–48 = 1 hit (a Damon Runyon story). Nor is there any "death ship", "ghost ship", "crew dead", "all officers dead", "I die"+SOS, or Dutch-freighter-with-dead-crew story in the Singapore press June 1947–March 1948.
3. **No November–December 1940 pickup of the AP "death ship" story was found** in NewspaperSG (Straits Times, SFP, Malaya Tribune, Morning Tribune, Pinang Gazette all present in the index for Nov 1940), in the Wellington *Evening Post* (the only 1940 title searchable through the DigitalNZ API), in *Pacific Islands Monthly* (Nov 1940–Feb 1941 issues, full OCR), or in the Dutch/Netherlands-Indies press (KB Delpher: `"ourang medan"` 1940–41 = 0).
4. **Trove could not be searched.** trove.nla.gov.au, nla.gov.au and catalogue.nla.gov.au are all behind an Anubis proof-of-work bot gate (article pages, search pages and the `/newspaper/rendition/...txt` OCR endpoint alike; a page fetch receives an explicit Anubis "Access Denied"). I did not attempt to defeat the gate or to use anyone's API key. ~20 web-search-engine probes (Bing and DuckDuckGo direct were junk/CAPTCHA) surfaced **no Trove article page containing "Ourang Medan"** (or "Orang Medan"/"Ourang Median") for any year, and no Nov–Dec 1940 "death ship"/"mystery S.O.S." Trove page. This is a *non-result*, not a negative: Trove must be searched with a key or a browser (see §7).
5. **Papers Past: negative, with a big caveat.** The website is behind an Imperva/Incapsula JS challenge (not circumvented). The DigitalNZ public API (no key needed) does search Papers Past OCR, but its index for 1940–45 is essentially the *Evening Post* (Wellington) plus the *Ellesmere Guardian*, and it contains **no records at all for 1946 onwards**. Evening Post 1940: `"ourang medan"`, `"orang medan"`, `ourang`, `"death ship"`, `"crew dead"`, `Medan ship`, `Trieste ship SOS`, `"shortwave" doctor ship` = 0; other 1940 hits are all genuine war-news items. Papers Past's other 1940 titles (Press, ODT, Auckland Star, NZ Herald, etc.) and everything after 1945 remain **unsearched**.
6. **Bonus (Netherlands-Indies press, reachable via the KB's public SRU endpoint):** the story's earliest 1948 appearance in the Dutch-language world found is **Leekster Courant, 24 Jan 1948** ("Mysterie, dat de zee nimmer zal prijsgeven"), credited to a reporter of *Elsevier's Weekblad* — i.e. *before* De locomotief (Semarang) 3 Feb 1948, which prints the same Elsevier text. In all Jan–Mar 1948 Dutch/Indies texts the incident is **mid-June 1947, c. 400 nautical miles SE of the Marshall Islands, Pacific** — the rescuing ship is unnamed ("wij"); **"Silver Star", "City of Baltimore" and the Strait of Malacca do not occur** in any of the ten OCR'd articles (grep-checked; OCR is imperfect). De locomotief 28 Feb 1948 makes the "sole survivor" a man landed on Taongi (Marshall Islands) and cared for by a Franciscan missionary; the headline OCR reads "De Enige Overlevende, Silvio Scherli, Vertelt zijn Verhaal" (the sole survivor, Silvio Scherli, tells his story); 13 Mar 1948 gives the cargo as "15.000 kisten en vaten zwavelzuur, nitro-glycerine in vloeibare vorm en nog andere chemicaliën" loaded in China, a passport of "Alfred Schutzwald uit Hamburg" issued in Shanghai, and closes with the editors' doubt versus "de verklaring van de auteur, Silvio Scherli, te Triest, die in zijn verzekering omtrent de authenticiteit volhardt". A 1955 Curaçao paper (Amigoe di Curaçao, 7 Jan 1955) summarises a *Panorama* magazine retelling in which the cargo is potassium cyanide (cyaankali) turning into prussic acid — still "ergens op de Stille Oceaan".

## 2. Archive access — what worked, what did not (nothing was circumvented)

| Archive | Status | Method used |
|---|---|---|
| **Trove** (trove.nla.gov.au, nla.gov.au/nla.obj-*, catalogue.nla.gov.au) | **Blocked** — Anubis PoW challenge (v1.26.2) for browser UA *and* plain curl UA; page fetch = "Access Denied: error code …"; API v3 needs a key | Not circumvented. Discovery attempted only via web search engines and Wayback CDX (no archived Trove search page for "ourang"). |
| **Papers Past** website | **Blocked** — Imperva/Incapsula JS challenge (212-byte stub); a page fetch returns an empty page | Not circumvented. |
| **DigitalNZ API** (api.digitalnz.org/records.json, no key) | **Works** and searches Papers Past OCR — but 1940–45 coverage ≈ Evening Post only; 0 records for 1946–1955 | Helper `code/trove-sg-nz_dnz.py`. |
| **NewspaperSG** | **Works** — the AWS-WAF "challenge" (HTTP 202) is triggered only by browser-like UAs; the default curl UA gets HTTP 200. Articles sit behind NLB's own "Terms and Conditions" form (`POST /newspapers/Digitised/TermsAndConditionsCheck`, fields `__RequestVerificationToken` + `u`), which I submitted as a normal user would; the session cookie then serves article pages. Search: `/newspapers/search?q=…&df=YYYY-MM-DD&dt=YYYY-MM-DD&size=100&sort=Oldest` (the `query=` form gives HTTP 400). | Helpers `code/trove-sg-nz_sgsearch.py`, `code/trove-sg-nz_sgclip.sh`. **Caveat:** the current NewspaperSG article pages do **not** expose full OCR text — only a ~50-word OCR "abstract" (in `data-nlb-articleabstract`) plus image clippings; the search itself runs over the full OCR. I read key clippings visually (no OCR engine available) and transcribed them. Post-1960s SPH items and all 2022 items are "LOCKED" (viewable only at NLB multimedia stations). |
| **Pacific Islands Monthly** (NLA digitisation, Trove) | Trove gate blocks nla.gov.au, but the third-party mirror **pacificislandsmonthly.com** serves the full NLA OCR per issue | 192 issues fetched (all of 1940, 1941, 1947–1960) and grepped. |
| **KB / Delpher** (Dutch + Netherlands-Indies press incl. De locomotief) | Public SRU endpoint `https://jsru.kb.nl/sru/sru?x-collection=DDD_artikel&query=…` works; OCR via `https://resolver.kb.nl/resolve?urn=…:ocr` (must be https) | Helper `code/trove-sg-nz_sru.py`. |
| Others tested | Chronicling America/loc.gov API: 0 hits 1940–63; newspapers.com: Cloudflare block; Elephind: dead; Bing/DDG via curl: junk/CAPTCHA. | |

## 3. Searches and results, archive by archive

### 3.1 NewspaperSG (full-text OCR; all counts are total hits in the date range)

Name searches (all years unless stated):
- `"ourang medan"` → **3**: Straits Times 19 May 2022 p.A10 (series promo, locked); **Straits Times 6 Jun 2022 p.A15 "The greatest unsolved maritime mystery of the Malacca Strait"** (locked); Straits Times 4 Nov 2022 p.A22 (media-awards story, locked).
- `ourang` → 48 (1844–2022): orang-utan items, a 1930 film "Ourang", Nepalese MP "Narendra Jung Ourang" (1960), Malay-language noise; **none 1940–1949**, none relevant before 2022.
- `"Ourang"` 1940–1949 → "No records found". `ourang-medan` → 0. `"orang medan"` 1940–70 → 1 (Berita Harian 1961, Malay literature article, unrelated). `ouran medan` → 2 (Malay religious columns). `"Ourang Medan"` 1900–2025 → same 3 as above.
- `Scherli` (all years) → 5: four are the Italian sculler Scherli at Henley 1939; the fifth is the 2022 ST article (which therefore names Silvio Scherli).
- `Trieste ship` Oct–Dec 1940 → 1 (Albania war news); 1948 → 5 (unrelated).

Nov–Dec 1940 window (AP "death ship" story): `"death ship"` Oct–Dec 1940 → 0 (also 0 for all of 1940–41); `"ship of death"` 1940–41 → 0; `"mystery ship"` Oct–Dec 1940 → 0; `"mystery of the sea"` Oct–Dec 1940 → 0; `"Solomon Islands"` Nov–Dec 1940 → 3 (all cinema advertisements); `"Dutch ship"` Nov–Dec 1940 → 3 (coroner's returns; a theft case); `"blew up" ship` Nov–Dec 1940 → 8 (U-boat/war news); `S.O.S. ship crew` Nov–Dec 1940 → 4 (Rostron obituary, Bass Strait mines, Port Brisbane); `medan S.O.S.` Oct–Dec 1940 → 0; `wireless doctor S.O.S. steamship`, `"at their posts" dead ship`, `Solomons steamer dead crew`, `"Associated Press" ship dead crew mystery`, `"short-wave" doctor ship`, `"second officer" dead S.O.S.` (15 Oct–31 Dec 1940) → all 0.

June 1947–March 1948 (and wider 1947–48) window: `"death ship"` → 0; `"ghost ship"` → 1 (Byrd expedition, Jan 1947); `"crew dead"` → 0; `"dead crew"` → 1 (Sikorsky book review); `"all dead" ship` → 0; `"all officers" dead ship` → 0; `"I die" S.O.S.` → 0; `"whole crew" dead` → 0; `"Dutch ship" dead` → 0; `"Dutch freighter"` → 15 (Grootekerk, Molenkerk, Saparoea, Talisse, Karsik, Moebai — all ordinary shipping news; see §5); `"silver star"` → 278 (see §4); `"City of Baltimore"` → 1 (fiction); `medan S.O.S.` → 2 (Blue Funnel sailing advertisements listing Medan); `"mystery ship" Malacca` → 2 (Hemland collision, Sept 1948 — §5); `"mystery of the sea" ship` → 1 (Sir Harvey Adamson — §5); `derelict Malacca` → 17 (none a derelict ship); `"Straits of Malacca" bodies ship` → 1 (honours citations); kernel-chemistry queries `poison fumes crew ship dead`, `cyanide ship crew`, `nitroglycerine ship`, `junk crew dead drifting`, `drifting ship "dead" bodies`, `gas crew dead ship` (1 — tear gas, Haifa), `"sulphuric acid" ship cargo` (2 — a Hoegh Silvercloud cargo manifest; the mined Chinese ship Pu To, Hong Kong, Oct 1947, 36 dead) → nothing resembling a poisoned crew. Early-1948 pickup checks: `Elsevier ship`, `"de locomotief"`, `"Marshall Islands" ship dead`, `Dutch mystery ship dead crew` → 0.

Later retellings 1948–1990: `medan "ghost ship"` → 1 (TV listing), `medan "death ship"` → 0, `medan "Silver Star"` → 49 (all "Medan" the city + unrelated "Silver Star"), `medan "I die"` → 7 (advertisements), `medan "Marshall Islands"`, `medan mystery ship dead crew`, `medan "Straits of Malacca" mystery`, `medan derelict` → 0. `"ghost ship"` 1949–69 → 54 and `"death ship"` 1949–69 → 15, all listed in `sources/search-logs/newspapersg_digitalnz_search_log.md`; they concern the Horai Maru hulk (1949), the yacht Imperia (1950), the Joyita (Nov 1955–1957, many items), the Santa Maria hijack (1961), etc. — **none mentions the Ourang Medan** (confirmed by the zero result for "ourang" in those years).

### 3.2 Papers Past via DigitalNZ (Evening Post 1940 unless stated)
`"ourang medan"`, `"orang medan"`, `"ourang-medan"`, `ourang` (1940), `"death ship"`, `"crew dead"`, `Medan ship`, `Trieste ship SOS`, `"shortwave" doctor ship`, `"all dead" ship crew SOS`, `steamship officers dead wireless`, `"Solomon Islands" wireless doctor` → **0**. `"mystery ship"` → 5 (Kermadec raider, Thermopylae, Graf Spee, etc.); `"Solomon Islands" S.O.S.` → 13 (church notices, shipping lists — noise); `"Dutch ship" SOS` → 1, `"Dutch steamer" dead` → 1, `"second officer" dead ship` → 2, `"blew up" crew dead ship` → 1 (all U-boat/mine war news, Jan–Mar 1940); `Trieste` 1940 → 25 (war news only, incl. 20 Nov–21 Dec 1940 items about Taranto, Italian disorders); `S.O.S.` 1940 → 8,071, of which every 15 Nov–15 Dec 1940 item is genuine war news (Orinoco SOS, Atlantic distress calls, Idarwald, a stranded inter-state steamer off Port Phillip, etc.). All-years `ourang` → 333 (all "ourang-outang", 1865–1916); `Scherli` → 2 (unrelated, 1896/1912).

### 3.3 Pacific Islands Monthly (full OCR, 192 issues: 1940–41, 1947–60)
"Ourang", "Ourang Medan", "death ship", "ship of death", "Scherli" → **0 in every issue**. "Silver Star" only as the US decoration (Lt F. A. Rhoades; two Tongan scouts). "mystery ship" only Noumea's ketch "Avalon" (Apr 1948) and Japanese "mystery ships" (May 1953). The Dec 1940 and Jan 1941 issues (the ones that would have noticed a "death ship" 200 miles from the Solomons in Nov 1940) contain nothing.

### 3.4 KB / Delpher (Dutch and Indies press)
`"ourang medan"` → 10 records: Leekster Courant 24 Jan 1948; De locomotief 3 Feb 1948 (a0050 "Een Mysterie van de Zee…", a0051 "Het bleef stil"), 28 Feb 1948 (a0033 "Ondergang der 'Ourang Medan' — 'Voor het Eerst Werd ik Bang' — De Enige Overlevende, Silvio Scherli, Vertelt zijn Verhaal…", a0034 "Het verhaal", a0035 "Langs een omweg", a0036 "De fatale dag"), 13 Mar 1948 (a0036 "Mysterie der 'Ourang Medan' — De Dodelijke Zwavelzuur-Gassen Doortrokken het Gehele Schip — Fantasie of Realiteit?", a0038 "S.O.S."); Amigoe di Curaçao 7 Jan 1955 ("Panorama"). `"ourang medan"` limited to 1940–41 → **0**. `"orang medan"` → 8 (radio programmes etc., unrelated); `"ourang-medan"` → 0; `Scherli` 1940–60 → 29 (mostly "Foto Scherli" photo credits 1940–42 plus the two De locomotief items); `"silver star"` Jun 1947–Mar 1948 → 0.

### 3.5 Trove
Not searchable (see §2). Web-search probes used: `site:trove.nla.gov.au "ourang medan"`, `"Ourang Medan" nla.news-article`, `"Ourang Medan" OR "Orang Medan" OR "Ourang Median" trove 1948…1954`, `"death ship" 1940 "Solomon Islands" "S.O.S." trove`, `"Nov 1940" Trove "death ship"/"mystery S.O.S."`, `"Silver Star" Malacca dead crew 1948 trove`, `"Pacific Islands Monthly" "Ourang Medan"`, Australian metropolitan-daily and magazine title variants, Elsevier/Marshall Islands 1948 variants, etc. Result: only unrelated Trove pages (e.g. "16 Dec 1940 — SHIP SINKS", "24 Feb 1939 — TORPEDOED SHIP'S SOS MYSTERY DEEPENS", "05 Oct 1940 — U-BOAT SUPPLY SHIP"). Wayback CDX: Trove article pages are archived only sporadically; no archived Trove search page for "ourang".

## 4. The Singapore press, June 1947–March 1948, and the "Silver Star"

- Nothing in NewspaperSG between 1 June 1947 and 31 March 1948 describes a Dutch (or any) ship found with its crew dead, a ship exploding under tow, an "I die" SOS, or an American ship "Silver Star"/"City of Baltimore" in the Strait. The index for this period is dense (Straits Times, Singapore Free Press, Malaya Tribune, Morning Tribune, Sunday Tribune, Straits Budget, Pinang Gazette are all present), and it *does* carry the genuine small dramas of the Strait (Hemland collision, Moebai SOS — §5), so silence here is meaningful: had an "Ourang Medan" incident occurred on Singapore's doorstep it would be here.
- **"Silver Star" shipping check:** 278 full-text hits 1947–48; title tally = race cards ("Today's Race Card" ×15, "TODAY'S CARD" ×9, Penang/Selangor/KL race programmes, "Straits Times Selections", etc.), US Silver Star decorations to RAF/RN officers, "News from the Mews". Not one hit is a shipping column, arrival/departure list, or ship report; `"s.s. silver star"` = 0. The only "silverstar"-type shipping item is Hoegh's *Silvercloud* (1947) and a Hoegh-Knutsen service (Nov 1948). Delpher (Indies Dutch press) also has 0 for "silver star" Jun 1947–Mar 1948.
- The 1948 retelling was **not** picked up by the Singapore press: 0 hits for Elsevier / De locomotief / Marshall Islands death-ship / "ourang" in 1948 (or any year before 2022).

## 5. Real incidents in Asian waters 1947–48 that could be a kernel (Singapore press)

None is a "dead crew found aboard" story; these are the closest genuine items:

1. **Sir Harvey Adamson, April 1947 (Andaman Sea).** Straits Times, 8 May 1947, p.1, "SHIP WRITTEN OFF": *"RANGOON, Wednesday. — The loss of the 1,030-ton ship Sir Harvey Adamson, which disappeared in the Andaman Sea off the Burma coast three weeks ago with 250 persons aboard, was written off today as another unsolved mystery of the sea.—A.P."* (transcribed from the clipping; the OCR abstract reads "1,050-ton"). URL: https://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/newspapers/digitised/article/straitstimes19470508-1.2.9. The only 1947 "unsolved mystery of the sea" in the region, and A.P.-distributed — but a vanishing, not a death ship.
2. **Unidentified ~50-ton steam craft collides with Swedish MV Hemland and vanishes, Strait of Malacca, 2.25 a.m. Friday 3 Sept 1948.** Malaya Tribune, 6 Sept 1948, p.2, "MYSTERY SHIP COLLIDES, VANISHES IN MALACCA ST." and Morning Tribune, 6 Sept 1948, p.1, "SHIP VANISHES AFTER CRASH — MYSTERY IN MALACCA STRAITS — SAILS OFF IN DARKNESS—NO SIGNALS (Tribune Shipping Reporter)". Full transcription not included in this folder; key lines: *"We saw that a steam-driven craft of about 50 tons, carrying no lights, had brushed against our side. She did not reply to our signals asking for her name … Naval, Customs and Police authorities have been alerted to search for the mystery ship."* Post-dates the Jan–Mar 1948 story, so not a source, but shows how a genuine Strait "mystery ship" was reported.
3. **Small Dutch freighter Moebia/Moebai, disabled and drifting off Sumatra, sends SOS (last week of Nov 1948); answered by the 7,651-ton Dutch freighter Molenkerk "40 miles from the northern entrance to the Straits of Malacca", towed to Penang; nine Dutchmen aboard, no casualties.** Morning Tribune, 1 Dec 1948, p.2, "Dutch Ship Feared Seizure, Sent SOS" (Capt. Zwanenburg interviewed); Straits Times 1 Dec 1948 p.7 and Straits Budget 2 Dec 1948 "SHIP TOWED OFF HOSTILE COAST".
4. **Chinese ship Pu To mined off Hong Kong, 36 dead** (Singapore Free Press 6 Oct 1947) — an explosion/casualty story, no mystery.
5. Later "death ship" of the region: Straits Times 15 Dec 1953 p.1, "Indonesians find a 'death ship'": *"JAKARTA, Mon. AN Indonesian patrol vessel has discovered a Philippines vessel with a crew of two emaciated men and three corpses drifting between the Celebes and the Philippines … The corpses were those of two women and a child who had died of starvation.—Reuter."*.
No poisoned-crew / chemical-cargo / drifting-junk-with-dead-crew story was found for 1947–48.

## 6. Later retellings (1950s–2020s)

- **Singapore:** none until **The Straits Times, 6 June 2022, p.A15, "The greatest unsolved maritime mystery of the Malacca Strait"** (third of a five-part "Unsolved mysteries of South-east Asia" series; the same series produced a podcast that won a Digital Media Award, ST 4 Nov 2022). Locked on NewspaperSG (search abstract only: *"In the third of a five-part monthly series, The Straits Times dives into reports about the Ourang Medan 'ghost ship' in the Strait of Malacca and its tragic end over 70 years ago"*); the full OCR contains "Scherli". Web summaries of the series say it credits interviews with maritime researcher Sayed Fauzan Riyadi (Raja Ali Haji Maritime University, Riau), Adm. Bernard Kent Sondakh (ex-Indonesian Navy) and Dr Eric Frécon — i.e. modern commentary, no primary source.
- **Pacific Islands Monthly 1947–60:** never mentioned it.
- **Papers Past (post-1945):** unsearchable via the API (no records after 1945).
- **Trove:** unknown (blocked); web search found no Australian retelling.
- **Dutch-language:** Amigoe di Curaçao 7 Jan 1955 summarising *Panorama* (cyanide-cargo version, "somewhere on the Pacific").

## 7. Transcriptions of the most important texts

### 7.1 Leekster Courant (Leek, Netherlands), 24 Jan 1948 — "MYSTERIE, DAT DE ZEE NIMMER ZAL PRIJSGEVEN" (credited "aldus een verslaggever van 'Elsevier's Weekblad'")
URL: https://resolver.kb.nl/resolve?urn=MMRHCG04:235133008:mpeg21:a00006 (full text in `sources/reports/delpher_report.md`, B1). Key passages (OCR, verbatim):
- *"Wij voeren midden Juni 1947 ongeveer 400 zeemijlen Zuidoostelijk van de Marshall eilanden, toen wij van de 'Ourang Medan' op de 600 metergolf dit radiobericht ontvingen: 'S.O.S. from ship ourang medan stop pse ships with SW get urgent DH . medio° stop'."* [= "please ships with SW (short wave) get urgent … medico"]
- *"'SOS van de 'Ourang Medan' 20 gr. Westerbreedte 179 gr. Oosterlengte stop Wij drijven stop tweede officier dood op de brug stop kapitein en hoofdmachinist dood in kaartenkamer stop waarschijnlijk gehele bemanning overleden stop deel der bemanning …' Hier brak de uitzending plotseling af … Alleen twee woorden kwamen nog door: 'Ik sterf'."*
- Ship described as *"een vrachtschip van ruim 5000 ton … met één schoorsteen, veertig jaar oud en in die veertig jaar zeker wel tienmaal van naam en vlag en reder verwisseld. Tussen 1935 en 1937 had het … vier houten slaapdekken in de ruimen … als Chinees transportschip."*
- *"Overal lagen lijken. Er lag ook een dode hond. En het verschrikkelijkste was de krampachtige houding der doden, terwijl hun gezichten een afschuwelijke angst uitdrukten … De meeste doden waren Oosterlingen van verschillend ras"*; 22 dead; one lifeboat missing; *"'Alle man van boord! Brand in luik vier!'"*; three further explosions; the ship burns out and sinks; *"De Stille Oceaan is op dat punt enige duizenden meters diep."*
- No rescuing-ship name, no "Silver Star", no Malacca.

### 7.2 De locomotief (Semarang), 3 Feb, 28 Feb, 13 Mar 1948
Full texts in `sources/reports/delpher_report.md`, B2–B4 (poor OCR in places). 3 Feb 1948 = the same Elsevier text (*"Wij voeren midden Juni 1947 … zeemijlen Zuid[oost]elijk van de Marshall-[eilanden]"*). 28 Feb 1948 headline: *"Ondergang der 'Ourang Medan' — 'Voor het Eerst Werd ik Bang' — De Enige Overlevende, Silvio Scherli, Vertelt zijn Verhaal — De Kapitein die Niet Terug Kwam — De Bemanning"*; body: the lifeboat reached *"het eiland Tcangi [Taongi], behorend tot de Marshall-eilanden"*, one unconscious survivor taken to a *"Franciscaner missionaris"* who *"schrijft het volgende: 'Vijf dagen heb ik in mijn eenzaam huis gastvrijheid verleend…'"*. 13 Mar 1948: cargo *"15.000 kisten en vaten zwavelzuur, nitro-glycerine in vloeibare vorm en nog andere chemicaliën"* loaded in China; passport *"afgegeven door de Chinese autoriteiten te Shanghai, met de naam Alfred Schutzwald uit Hamburg"*; editorial close: *"…een boeiende romance is. Hiertegenover staat de verklaring van de auteur, Silvio Scherli, te Triest, die in zijn verzekering omtrent de authenticiteit volhardt."*

### 7.3 Singapore items — see §5 (transcribed from NLB clipping images).

## 8. What returned nothing (explicit list)

- NewspaperSG: every "Ourang/Orang Medan" spelling 1940–2021; every 1940 death-ship phrasing (Oct–Dec 1940 and 1940–41); every 1947–48 dead-crew/death-ship/ghost-ship/Dutch-freighter-dead/"I die"/all-officers phrasing; "Silver Star" as a ship; "City of Baltimore" as a ship; Scherli/Trieste ship 1940 & 1948; Elsevier/De locomotief/Marshall Islands 1948; poison/cyanide/nitroglycerine/sulphuric-acid-crew/junk-dead-crew 1947–48; all Medan+mystery variants 1948–90.
- Evening Post (NZ) 1940: every name and phrase; Nov–Dec 1940 S.O.S./steamer/dead sweeps show only war news.
- Pacific Islands Monthly 1940–41, 1947–60: every name/phrase.
- Delpher 1940–41: "ourang medan"; 1947–48: "silver star".
- Trove: nothing discoverable via search engines (archive itself unreachable).
- Wayback: no archived Trove or Papers Past search page for "ourang"; Chronicling America 1940–63: 0.

## 9. Caveats and recommendations

1. **Trove must still be searched properly** (API key or a browser session): recommended queries `"Ourang Medan"`, `"Orang Medan"`, `Ourang Medan~` (fuzzy), `"death ship" AND "Solomon"` limited to 1940-11-01..1940-12-31, `"Silver Star" AND Malacca` 1948, and Pacific Islands Monthly/"Australian Women's Weekly" for retellings. Also check the Trove-hosted *Pacific Islands Monthly* index — my mirror sweep covers 1940–41 and 1947–60 only.
2. **Papers Past 1940** beyond the Evening Post (Press, Otago Daily Times, Auckland Star, NZ Herald, provincial dailies) is unsearched, as is everything 1946–1950; the DigitalNZ index simply lacks them. The Evening Post negative is nevertheless meaningful, as it carried the same overseas cable services (Press Association/Reuters/AAP, UP, "official wireless") as the other NZ dailies.
3. **NewspaperSG full OCR** is not exposed on the new site; my transcriptions come from reading clipping images. The 2022 Straits Times article is locked; it can be read at NLB or via the ST website/podcast ("The Unsolved Mysteries of South East Asia: The ghost ship in the Strait of Malacca", 2022).
4. The Dutch findings (Leekster Courant 24 Jan 1948 = Elsevier's Weekblad; Pacific/Marshall Islands setting; no Silver Star/Malacca in any Jan–Mar 1948 Dutch or Indies text; Scherli presented as survivor/author) are covered in `sources/reports/delpher_report.md` — flagged here because the KB SRU route is open and quick (`code/trove-sg-nz_sru.py`), and because they bear directly on when the Malacca/Silver Star details entered the story (not in Jan–Mar 1948 Dutch/Indies print, on this evidence; the Straits of Malacca version therefore seems to arrive with the May 1952 US Coast Guard *Proceedings* editorial or an intermediate US/UK 1948–52 retelling).

## 10. File inventory
- This file; `sources/search-logs/newspapersg_digitalnz_search_log.md` (all queries/hit counts); `code/trove-sg-nz_dnz.py`, `code/trove-sg-nz_sgsearch.py`, `code/trove-sg-nz_sgclip.sh`, `code/trove-sg-nz_sru.py` — reproducible helpers.
- Working copies not included in this folder:
  - `articles/NewspaperSG_*.txt` — 12 files (URL, paper, date, page, access status, OCR abstract, transcription where read).
  - `kb/KB_*.txt` — 10 OCR texts (Leekster Courant 1948-01-24; De locomotief 1948-02-03 ×2, 1948-02-28 ×4, 1948-03-13 ×2; Amigoe 1955-01-07).
  - `clips/*.png` — NLB clipping images for the seven Singapore articles read.
  - `pim/*.html` — 192 Pacific Islands Monthly issues (full OCR).
  - `sg_raw/` — raw NewspaperSG search pages and parsed JSON; `pp_1940_battery.txt` — Papers Past/Evening Post 1940 battery.