# Search log — Ourang Medan investigation (Trove / Papers Past / NewspaperSG / PIM / KB-Delpher)

## NewspaperSG (https://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/newspapers/search?q=...&df=...&dt=...&size=100&sort=Oldest) — full-text OCR search

| Query | Date range | Hits |
|---|---|---|
| S.O.S. ship crew | 1940-11-01 to 1940-12-31 | 4 |
| Scherli | 1900-01-01 to 2025-12-31 | 5 |
| Trieste ship | 1940-10-01 to 1940-12-31 | 1 |
| Trieste ship | 1948-01-01 to 1948-12-31 | 5 |
| "Dutch freighter" | 1947-01-01 to 1948-12-31 | 15 |
| "Dutch ship" | 1940-11-01 to 1940-12-31 | 3 |
| "Dutch ship" dead | 1947-01-01 to 1948-12-31 | 0 |
| "I die" S.O.S. | 1947-01-01 to 1948-12-31 | 0 |
| "Solomon Islands" | 1940-11-01 to 1940-12-31 | 3 |
| "all dead" ship | 1947-01-01 to 1948-12-31 | 0 |
| "all officers" dead ship | 1947-01-01 to 1948-12-31 | 0 |
| "blew up" ship | 1940-11-01 to 1940-12-31 | 8 |
| "crew dead" | 1947-01-01 to 1948-12-31 | 0 |
| "dead crew" | 1947-01-01 to 1948-12-31 | 1 |
| "death ship" | 1940-10-01 to 1940-12-31 | 0 |
| "death ship" | 1947-01-01 to 1948-12-31 | 0 |
| "ghost ship" | 1947-01-01 to 1948-12-31 | 1 |
| "mystery ship" | 1940-10-01 to 1940-12-31 | 0 |
| "orang medan" | 1940-01-01 to 1970-12-31 | 1 |
| "silver star" | 1947-01-01 to 1948-12-31 | 278 |
| ourang-medan | 1940-01-01 to 1970-12-31 | 0 |
| "silver star" | 1947-01-01 to 1948-12-31 | 278 |
| "City of Baltimore" | 1947-01-01 to 1948-12-31 | 1 |
| "Ourang Medan" | 1900-01-01 to 2025-12-31 | 3 |
| "Straits of Malacca" bodies ship | 1947-01-01 to 1948-12-31 | 1 |
| "death ship" | 1949-01-01 to 1969-12-31 | 15 |
| "ghost ship" | 1949-01-01 to 1969-12-31 | 54 |
| "mystery of the sea" ship | 1947-01-01 to 1948-12-31 | 1 |
| "mystery ship" Malacca | 1947-01-01 to 1948-12-31 | 2 |
| "sulphuric acid" ship cargo | 1947-01-01 to 1948-12-31 | 2 |
| "whole crew" dead | 1947-01-01 to 1948-12-31 | 0 |
| cyanide ship crew | 1947-01-01 to 1948-12-31 | 0 |
| derelict Malacca | 1947-01-01 to 1948-12-31 | 17 |
| drifting ship "dead" bodies | 1947-01-01 to 1948-12-31 | 0 |
| gas crew dead ship | 1947-01-01 to 1948-12-31 | 1 |
| junk crew dead drifting | 1947-01-01 to 1948-12-31 | 0 |
| medan S.O.S. | 1940-10-01 to 1940-12-31 | 0 |
| medan S.O.S. | 1947-01-01 to 1948-12-31 | 2 |
| medan "I die" | 1948-01-01 to 1990-12-31 | 7 |
| medan "Silver Star" | 1948-01-01 to 1990-12-31 | 49 |
| medan "death ship" | 1948-01-01 to 1990-12-31 | 0 |
| medan "ghost ship" | 1948-01-01 to 1990-12-31 | 1 |
| nitroglycerine ship | 1947-01-01 to 1948-12-31 | 0 |
| poison fumes crew ship dead | 1947-01-01 to 1948-12-31 | 0 |
| Dutch mystery ship dead crew | 1948-01-01 to 1948-06-30 | 0 |
| Elsevier ship | 1948-01-01 to 1948-06-30 | 0 |
| Solomons steamer dead crew | 1940-10-15 to 1940-12-31 | 0 |
| "Associated Press" ship dead crew mystery | 1940-10-15 to 1940-12-31 | 0 |
| "Marshall Islands" ship dead | 1947-06-01 to 1948-06-30 | 0 |
| "Ourang" | 1940-01-01 to 1949-12-31 | 0 |
| "at their posts" dead ship | 1940-10-15 to 1940-12-31 | 0 |
| "de locomotief" | 1948-01-01 to 1948-12-31 | 0 |
| "death ship" | 1940-01-01 to 1941-12-31 | 0 |
| "faces" "terror" ship dead crew | 1947-01-01 to 1948-12-31 | 1 |
| "mystery of the sea" | 1940-10-01 to 1940-12-31 | 0 |
| "second officer" dead S.O.S. | 1940-10-15 to 1940-12-31 | 0 |
| "ship of death" | 1940-01-01 to 1941-12-31 | 0 |
| "short-wave" doctor ship | 1940-10-15 to 1940-12-31 | 0 |
| wireless doctor S.O.S. steamship | 1940-10-15 to 1940-12-31 | 0 |

Also run: '"ourang medan"' all years = 3 (all 2022, locked); 'ourang' all years = 48 (none 1940-1949; none relevant before 2022); '"silver star"' 1947-48 = 278 (all racehorse/medal/other; 0 in ship context; '"s.s. silver star"', '"silver star" steamer/freighter/tanker' = 0).

## Papers Past via DigitalNZ public API (https://api.digitalnz.org/records.json?text=...&and[primary_collection][]=Papers+Past&and[year][]=1940) — NB: index for 1940-45 is essentially the Evening Post (Wellington) only; no records at all for 1946+

- QUERY: '"death ship"' year=1940 -> result_count=0
- QUERY: '"mystery ship"' year=1940 -> result_count=5
- QUERY: '"Solomon Islands" S.O.S.' year=1940 -> result_count=13
- QUERY: '"Solomon Islands" wireless doctor' year=1940 -> result_count=0
- QUERY: '"crew dead"' year=1940 -> result_count=0
- QUERY: '"Dutch ship" SOS' year=1940 -> result_count=1
- QUERY: '"Dutch steamer" dead' year=1940 -> result_count=1
- QUERY: 'Trieste ship SOS' year=1940 -> result_count=0
- QUERY: '"shortwave" doctor ship' year=1940 -> result_count=0
- QUERY: '"second officer" dead ship' year=1940 -> result_count=2
- QUERY: 'Medan ship' year=1940 -> result_count=0
- QUERY: '"blew up" crew dead ship' year=1940 -> result_count=1
- QUERY: '"all dead" ship crew SOS' year=1940 -> result_count=0
- QUERY '"ourang medan"' all years -> 0; '"orang medan"' -> 0; '"ourang-medan"' -> 0; 'ourang' -> 333 (all orang-utan, 1865-1916); 'Scherli' -> 2 (irrelevant, 1896/1912); 'Trieste' 1940 -> 25 (war news only); 'Medan' 1940 -> 1 (not Oct-Dec); 'S.O.S. Solomon' 1940 -> 42 (all irrelevant); 'wireless doctor crew dead' 1940 -> 1 (irrelevant); 'Ourang OR Orang Medan' 1940 -> 1 (irrelevant)

## Pacific Islands Monthly (NLA digitisation, read via the third-party mirror pacificislandsmonthly.com; full OCR text per issue)

- Issues fetched and grepped: all issues 1940, 1941, 1947, 1948, 1949, 1950, 1951, 1952, 1953, 1954, 1955, 1956, 1957, 1958, 1959, 1960 (192 issues). Terms: Ourang, Ourang Medan, death ship / Death Ship, ship of death, Silver Star (ship context), Scherli, mystery ship, Trieste, crew dead -> NO hit for Ourang/Ourang Medan/death ship/Scherli in any issue; 'Silver Star' only as the US decoration; 'mystery ship' only Noumea ketch (Apr 1948) and Japanese 'mystery ships' (May 1953).

## KB / Delpher (Dutch and Netherlands-Indies press) via public SRU endpoint https://jsru.kb.nl/sru/sru?x-collection=DDD_artikel&query=...

- "ourang medan" all years -> 10 records: Leekster Courant 24 Jan 1948; De locomotief (Semarang) 3 Feb 1948 (2 segments), 28 Feb 1948 (4 segments), 13 Mar 1948 (2 segments); Amigoe di Curacao 7 Jan 1955.
- "ourang medan" 1940-1941 -> 0 (no Dutch/Indies pickup of the Oct/Nov 1940 Il Piccolo/AP story).
- "orang medan" -> 8 (all irrelevant: radio programmes, De West 1948 "Schip vergaan" is another ship); "ourang-medan" -> 0; Scherli 1940-60 -> 29 (photo credits "Foto Scherli" 1940-42 and the two De locomotief items); "silver star" Jun 1947-Mar 1948 -> 0.

## Trove (National Library of Australia)

- trove.nla.gov.au (search pages, article pages, /newspaper/rendition/nla.news-article<id>.txt, nla.gov.au/nla.obj-*, catalogue.nla.gov.au) ALL return the Anubis proof-of-work bot-challenge page (v1.26.2) to curl with browser UA and with default curl UA; a page fetch gets an explicit Anubis 'Access Denied'. Trove API v3 needs a key (not attempted). NOT circumvented.
- Web-search discovery (~20 queries; Bing and DuckDuckGo direct = junk/CAPTCHA): no Trove article page containing 'Ourang Medan' / 'Orang Medan' / 'Ourang Median' surfaced for any year; no 'death ship'/'mystery S.O.S.' Nov-Dec 1940 Trove page surfaced. Wayback CDX: no archived Trove search page for 'ourang'.

## Other discovery routes tested

- Chronicling America / loc.gov API: 0 for "ourang medan" 1940-1963. newspapers.com: Cloudflare block. Elephind: dead (redirect loop). Papers Past website: Imperva/Incapsula JS challenge (not circumvented); Wayback CDX for paperspast search pages: 504.