Thinking Sideways: The Ourang Medan

all of the legwork on this thing. They'll also notice if you had listened to what we're calling the last twenty six episodes before and you're re listening now, the music and sound effects are gone. Yes, we've we've gone back to straight audio, so be warned. We sound a little different today than we do in what you're about to listen to. Yeah, enjoy, Bye bye, Thinking Sideways. I don't understand. I'm you never know stories of things we simply don't know the answer too. Well. Hi there, and

thanks again for joining the show. This is Thinking Sideways the podcast, and I am Steve, and as always, on my left is Joe. Hello everybody, and on my right is Devon h And we are going to once again review a story that doesn't quite have an answer. Now this week, we were lucky enough we are not alone in our review of the story. We were able to get ahold of the known author, Roy Bington. She was nice enough to talk with us about the story. But

before we get to that, let's let's let Roy introduce himself. Well, my names Roy Benjon B A, I M. T O. N. And I'm a right to and a journalist and an author. But you've been doing for about seventeen years now. So this story the Ring mcdan is also commonly referred to as the death Ship like that. It's it's a creepy story and it's been around for a long long time time. This is one of those this stories been around since

the late forties. This story was told by salty old dogs to to the young guys on the ships all the time. As as a matter of fact, that's how Roy heard it for the first time. Well, I've got to go back to the source. The first time I had it was actually verbally. I was on an old merchant ship called the the Port's Halifax and we were crossing from Panama to to Australia. This vessel used to travel at top speed of about twelve miles an hour. You know, and he used to take us three weeks

to get from Panama to Australia. And on the night after the watch, we'd have a few beers in the mess room and people would tell stories, creepy stories about about the sea, etcetera. And I remember this one coming up because it really held the whole mess and we were all set around thinking, Jesus, what's this just for the benefit of our listeners, what exactly are the details of this interesting story? Well, I'm glad you asked, Joe. So here's the story. And we don't know if it's

N seven or nine. But in the Straits of Malacca there was a radio transmission which picked up and it was in Morris code. So the radio transmission was picked up by several ships in the area as well as on land, and everybody that had picked it up they started talking to each other to try to figure it out, and they triangulated approximately where it was at and the closest ship was the Silver Star. So the Silver Star of course went to lend aid to the ship that

is sending out a distress call. Now here's the creepy part. The first transmission says all officers including captain are dead, lying in chart room and ridge, possibly whole crew dead. And then a short time later, one more transmission is picked up and all it says is I die. So that's that's all there is in terms of actual transmissions from this ship, which is later comes to be discovered, according to the story, to be the out Ring Madan. You know, so that this is particularly creepy to me

because of the phrasing of it. It implies that this person is not part of the crew, and I think that's not true. I think that it's probably just that you know, there it's not maybe English isn't the first language, or maybe I think it's the chain of command thing, you got to give things in rank and order. But it just seems like possibly whole crew. Yeah yeah, yeah, exactly,

but maybe met whole crew but me. But I remember, this is a story that's been told many times, and whoever the radio operator or operators were that wrote this down, none of us have None of us have access to that piece of paper they wrote the message. Yeah, so there might be some in precision there ship certainly the like I said before, the closest star, the closest ship is the Silver Star. So she goes to lend aid. And when the crew arrives, and I've seen again multiple accounts.

Some say the sea was calm and she was gently floating. Some say the sea was rough and she was, you know, being batted around by the ocean under no power. But when they get to the ship and they discovered that it is, according to the accounts, the houring mcdan. So they came alongside and they boarded the ship. So that that lens creates the theory that there was probably a calm day if they were able to yeah, exactly. And that's that was one of the things that I went see.

They was gonna ask you, is how exactly did they get aboard this thing? Yea, it happened had been a calmer at least calmer sees if nothing else. But then having lived on a ship, I can tell you it had to be pretty dang calm, okay something like. So they get aboard and this is when the creep factors starts to ratch it up. The entire crew is dead all over the ship. According to the accounts, the entire

every crew member that they found was dead. And I believe the phraseology is in a rictus of fear, so their eyes are open, their hands are clawed, some of them have their mouths open, you know, staring at the skies as if they're screaming or scared to death of something. Even the ship's dog was frozen, and this rictus fear. So we we don't know exactly what's going on at this point. Now the Silver Star decides what we need to figure out what's going on, and we need to

haul this ship back. And something's bad here, so they go to tire up and want to hauler back to port, at which point somebody realizes that there is spoke coming out of the hour Ring Madan. They cut the lines, they pull away as quick as they can. The ship explodes and sinks to the bottom. I feel like I remember an account saying like it was lifted out of the sea. It exploded so hard and like then just sank within a matter. I've seen that account before, and

it's unclear. All we know is something happened and the ship blew up and sank to the bottom. So whatever happened, we have no way of knowing what that is. So

that's the end of the ship. So one other and one and another telling of the story the crew of the Silver Star went below decks and looking for looking for anybody who was alive, went into an area not sure, I'm not clear if it was the hold or exactly where the machinery spaces, I don't know, but learning in an area and it was cold, according to their account, and then and then they came back above above decks

and that's when fire started to break out. And in this telling of the story, there was no explosion, but essentially the fire sank the ship. It broke the back of the ship and the ship sank. So that's another telling of the story. And that telling of the story

is out there as well. Yeah, so yeah, that's that's as much as the story itself has ever given us well, and it sounds like there are a lot of different versions of this story, and you're absolutely right, and it's it's been a story that again, like I said before,

we can't pin down was seven was. It's been floating around, told, you know, word of mouth for many, many years, spending of course, people have been looking for the log books for the City of Baltimore and the Silver Star and they can't find them, or else they find them, and there's no mention of this incident in there. Well you know, and correct me if I'm wrong, But ships get renamed fairly frequently during this period of history, and they did so.

The Silver Star in particular, who is said to have come to the aid of the Aluringmadan, was renamed shortly thereafter. Because this is after the war. Ships are being used and purchased and bought, and I believe the name it got renamed to the Santa juan Ea or San Juanita. They keep changing. And Lloyd's Registry, which if anybody doesn't know,

Lloyd's Registry is basically the registry of all ships. So technically speaking, you should be able to find any ship and all of the evolutions of its names in that long and that's the problem that one of the initial problems that we'll get into later. But the Alring Macdon is not in there. It doesn't exist in that official record of all seafaring vessels. Interesting, but let's let's we'll come back to that because we got we'll get to

that a little bit later. I want to, as we like to do, I want to I want to go through all the theories that are out there and then we can kind of hash them apart and we can work our way through them. So the very first one is akin to the Bermuda triangle. It was a u would huge. So people say, this is the theory that it was a UFO that came over the ship and killed the entire crew and then took off sound. Well

that that doesn't explain why the ship blew up. That that doesn't give there's no there's nothing, there's no facts in there, There's nothing that a guy could hold on to to say, oh, well, there was this weird thing and then it happened. Like all we know is that they were dead. And and you know, I mean the UFO has swept them with the death ray. You would think the radio operator, but it would have been killed as fast as everybody else, Yeah, would have at the

same time. Yeah, And I've got to admit, you know, when we talked to Roy, he had a really good take on this UFOs frightening people to death. Well, why haven't many other people been frightened to death by UFOs? We found streets full of people and the rich to Sophia lying on the pavement. You know, I don't think we have I'm not quite sure about that. You know, it was a possibility. There's some pretty bus as stories around the UFO phenomena. The next theory that's on the

docket is that it didn't actually happen. There's a chance that this entire story was made up, like an old wives tale at old wives tale. I mean, if you think about it, it's the late forties. Guys have seen lots of weird stuff in the war, and maybe they've got, you know, some version of PTSD, and so they don't remember right what they saw, so they're reaccounting another story.

But the way they're telling it captures everybody's attention, much like we heard, you know, when Roy was talking about how he had heard it, and it just sticks with you. And so the next time that creepy stories being told, you retell it. And it might very well be. It would be kind of funny if it might very well be that the guy who told the story on Roy's ship was actually the guy who made the whole thing up.

And you know, might he might be, I don't know, And that's that's the that's the hard part is that there's no records. Like we talked about it earlier, is that you know, I said, there's there's no record of

this ship anywhere. Well, I guess the thing for me is like when you think of ghost ship stories that are made up, they usually take it to the next extreme of like and it haunts the straits forevermore, killing other people's ship, you know, you know, And I understand like the impulse to say, well, you know, they were just being practical and they're in their fake right, But I just I generally think of if somebody's gonna fake it, they tend to go all the way. You're absolutely right,

and a very well might have been made up. But there's one way to check, and that is to find the log books for the city of Baltimore and a Silver Star and look in there and see if there's any reference to this incident. You're right, and and there was an original text that supposedly where the story came from, which was in a publication from the U. S. Coast Guard. For a long long time, I mean, no, nobody's been

able to find any records of the ship. And it's only through the dogged research of Roy that we found out about some of that stuff. The problem with the whole thing is were did its originally what the old guy who told me. It's c who was an old guy who had been in the North Atlantic in the U boat. Was you know, these were old guys who knew every corner of the oceans of the world. Where did he get it from? So according to Vincent Gaddis,

it had been a press report. But I've searched the the newspaper library at Collingwood in North London looking for all reports of shipping from forty seven fortunate eight, and there's nothing masting the Orange Maerdan. I started then to think, well, maybe it's one of these kind of silly season stories where some high reporter thinks, I know what I'll do. I'll just cobble this story together and put it on

the wires and everybody will go for it. But there was something mentioned in gud Us, a story about a report of the tragedy in the document called the Proceedings of the Merchant Marine Council, which is part of the publicity output for the US Coast Guard. Well, I could never find this and I didn't believe it existed. I thought Gaddis had made it up, But then recently a friend in Australia managed to track it down. Sadly, although it's an official report. It doesn't tell you anything more

than we know. It doesn't tell you where the ship was from, where it was going, what porter had left. I would expect more thorough documentation in a document like that. There's nothing. It's just as if the legend has shoehorned itself into into that particular area, that official area, as if somebody and the Merchant Marine Council has said that

we're a better stick this Storian. But of course there's now you would expect if you found the log book of the Silver Star, obviously to of Baltimore, which I've tried to do, you would expect that to be a report in the low book giving the actual latitude and longitude of this. Then you'll be able to pin it down. But no, it doesn't. That doesn't happen either. I've written to various sources trying to find out why the log

books might be. Of course, most of the companies that we're running at that time, and it's just after the Second World War, a lot of that documentation is probably filed away in some floor in some buildings somewhere in Boston and New York. We don't know. So I did a huge a lot of research into the Philadelphia experiment, you know, like you know, making a ship invisible lovely idea, you know, but there's there's a good explanation for all

of it. But it's a fantastic story. I have a horrible feeling that that's what makes me think you around Madan might be a red herring. I don't know, there's something behind it. So obviously enough, the trail is cold. There's not a lot of paperwork on the ship its self that can be found at that point, which is kind of weird. Again. Yeah, it's it's odd that there's just so little, and we were lucky enough I had gone ahead and when I was doing my research, and

this is why we got ahold of Roys. He was the only one who seemed to have done a lot of research on it, and he put forward a theory which I have not really found anywhere else, that seems pretty plausible and has done the legwork that I think it lends in credence to maybe possibly being it all right, then received a communication we seemed rather road from Germany on very cranky, old typewritten envelope, and it was from a wonderful guy who I got to be very friendly

with that he's died now, but it's an actual professor of marine architecture called theatle sized door for and Theodore had been on the track of the around Madon for forty years, ever since the story broke, and he sent me a photo copy of a thirty two page leaflet which was in German by a guy called Otto Milky m I E l k E. And this was from and it was called us Total Shift under soot See, which is the death ship of the Southern Seas. And this was the Germans. I got the main parts of

it translated, and I thought, who is Otto Milky? And I found out that the guy actually was a German emy grave but he was actually living in my hometown up in Hall in Yorkshire. So I went to look for him and found out he died. So he was dead. But he raised some interesting points about the death of these sailors on the around Madan. That they could have been carrying poison gases such as zayan carli which is

potassium cyanide and possibly explaining the explosion nitro glycering. Now this if they had such a mixture on board, how it would have gone and recorded is a mystery. But you know, even fifty years ago, this would have ensured reams and reams of paperwork to get this kind of

a cargo going. But if you think of the situation which the Dutch had with their East Indies Empire after the Second World War, they were trying to re establish their foothold after the Japanese had been ejected from that part of the world, and they had a lot to face. Although the Japanese had gone, communist insurgency had sprung up in their place, and there was a terrific battle, what a lot of unpleasant imperialist genocide going on over there.

We could be talking about the Orangeadan if it existed carrying a cargo of poison gas for use in this campaign against the people who did not want the Dutch to come back. You know, that's always a possibility, and I have actually there is a possibility that you know, if this was an accident on board the ship and they were carrying an unsecured hazardous materials, there could have been any kind of poisoning. You know, I looked into

other areas of what could have happened. Now if this vessel was carrying poison gases, for use in a military campaign, gases which were banned by international law, and gases which would not have got a manifest as a cargo from any shipping authority. Then it could have been a very early example of what you guys called black op. Now after the war, if you look at the records, and

this is where professors Sears Dover helped me immensely. Literally dozens and dozens of German cargo ships or actually taken over by the Allies, especially the British, for one particular reason, and that was to dispose of poison gases which the Nazis had manufactured. And these ships and I have a list of all the ships, the tonnages, and I know where they've all been sank. They were taken out by

volunteer crews. They were loaded to the to the decks which sarin tabne mustard gas and they were just sunk by opening the sea cocks or detonating a charge. Um. These ships are actually lying on the bottom of the let'll see the Atlantic, the Baltic, all over the place, Okay, And that makes a lot of sense. It wouldn't be

that tough to take one of those things. Paying a new name on his bow and then send it off, you know, send it off somewhere if you think that somebody somewhere needs some poison gas, or maybe somebody made you an offer you couldn't refuse, or maybe you just wanted to make some money, or you wanted to get rid of it and you didn't want it to be able to get tracks to its original name. There's every

one of these is plausible. There's if if royce theory is correct, and that they were packing these illegal substances to to just scuttle it or to sell it or whatever, and something went wrong, there's a there's a whole host of reasons why that name could have just been made up as you, as he said when we were talking to him, somebody could have just leaned over the side, taking a paintbrush and just painted a new name on it.

And absolutely, and if you're yeah, if you're going up on some little special trips somewhere that you don't want to you know, I don't want to have a high profile or anything like that, you leave, you leave port, then you paint your name a new name over the top of the old name, and then later on, you know,

change it back. Yeah, and you know another hypothesis that I should have came up with just now, you know, but I like to speculate, and it's of course pure speculation, of course, But in this hypothesis, the distress called did not actually originate with the Orangemudon. It originated with another ship. So now imagine that. Imagine the Orangemudon had some cargo, whether it's poison gas or or just ordinary munitions or whatever, that you don't want to see arriving at its destination.

And you don't have a navy to speak of, so you can't send a battleship out and board it or sink it or whatever. You've got to find a way to get on that ship. So if you know where it's going, and for example, you know it's going to be going through the Straits of Malacca, because I mean basically, if you're in the Pacific and you're saying heading over towards India or the Mediterranean, whatever, you pretty much have to go through the Straits of Malacca. A lot of

the world shipping goes through there. So supposing you know when at lease ports, so you know roughly at speed, you know when it's going to be in the straits. If you have, say, afraid of yourself, than what you can do is wait until it's reasonably close by the closest ship there is, send out your distress call, and then they come alongside. Like your ship which is sitting there dead in the water. Now it's got stuff on it,

it's got maybe explosives, maybe poison gas. You don't really want to have a firefight with these guys, So what you do is, as they're pulling alongside, you just release a lot of invisible toxic gas sarah and mustard gas whatever. As they're pulling alongside to render aid. You basically gass them, which is a nasty way to do some business. Is

a nasty way to do it. But if you know, for whatever reason, you don't want to have a firefight with these guys, then gassing them as the next best solution. Then you then you know you've got your gas masks on already, of course, so you hop aboard and go to go down below decks, lance them incendy areas with timers, uh, and then you leave, and of course you're you're stress call has been picked up by either ships in the area.

So eventually some of the ships show up and they're in time to witness the dead crew and then to see the ship, you know, catch fire and then blow up. This lends credence to the idea that there may have been explosives for perhaps artillery shells or things like that. And the one problem is that it is okay, so again it's DoD They just blatantly faked the name on the ship because again it's that name is not able

to be pinned down anyway. That's the hard part. I like where you're going, and there's p there's plausibility in that. I also remember that they did find the operator, the telegram operator, dead at his post having sent those messages, didn't they when they boarded the ship. That's what the story says, although to be fair it is Yeah, it's just that is a sixty plus year old story that you know, some guy could have said, and they found

those sparks dead at his station. Yeah, you just don't know, Yeah, you know. And there are so many things with this thing, right that you just don't know. I mean, okay, toxic gases fine, but like how many toxic gases like actually kill someone fast enough to have a rigor of fear? Just like, yeah, and how do you that blow decks? That's the hard part. If they're just pulling alongside and you're gassing them, how do you get it blow decks? Uh, you know, that's a good question. I don't know. And

again we don't know. I presume that you pick something that's heavier than air and if you send a massive enough cloud of it over there. It's just there's so many different questions. Yeah, and I don't I don't know what the I don't know what the you know, this would be a sailor question. But say say, for example, you do pick up a distress call from another ship. You know, you've been at sea for weeks, nothing about

interesting has happened. Now suddenly you know you're coming alongside some ship that's in distress, and of course you're hoping it gets hoped that maybe this will be a nice ghost ship and you have a great story for your grandkids, you know. So maybe the entire crew was up on deck for this, this whole event, that to come and see the ship that was that was reporting that everybody is dead. But the end, what they didn't realize is they were gonna be the ones that are gonna every Yeah,

that's that's true. Yeah. The people I'm thinking about, is this happened eight. I'm thinking about the the Israelis. You know, as you know, the UN partition Palestine in seven war immediately broke out between Israel and the Arabs. The state of Israel was created in ninety eight. And the Israelis have a history of a very very clever and very

effective solutions to problems. So if they did indeed intercept an arms shipment, that could be one cute and that could be one way to do it without shooting, without without firing a shot, just gas, the crew plants some bombs leave. It's entirely possible. That's entirely possible. And as far as the name change goes, uh, you know, it might have been one of those things to change the name of the ship in transit, just to make it

harder to track you. So you pop, you pop out of one port, you change your name, and whatever ports you stop in, nobody can. Nobody can really track you because you know, they don't know this Ramadan ship, so it makes it harder to track. Well, let's let's move to the next theory. Yeah, okay, So the next theory is that there was nothing foul or defarious that happened, but it was a simple mechanical failure. And by that I mean a boiler room fire shifts. At this time,

a lot of them ran on coal. So if the boiler itself is malfunctioning, and you know, those ships burn massive amounts of coal to create their propulsion, it's gonna

be pumping out a lot of c O two. C O two is heavier than air, So of course, what's that mean is that if a fire breaks out and they don't realize it right away, the whole of the ship is first going to start filling with c O two, which is going to smother all crew members as the gas rises up because of the volume, until it's at a great volume that spills out the top, which would then suffocate all the crew members, which dying from from that kind of assixiation is not a pleasant way to go,

And that would explain the the supposed expressions on the people's face. You know, if you think about it, and you're dying, you're gasping for air, you're gonna have a very panic look on your face when you finally go. Probably, yeah, I just I don't know. I don't totally know the science behind. If you're standing on like an open air

deck of a ship, you're right. And and the thing that I was gonna say is, if we think about it, that area of the world that it was supposed to happen in is a very hot tropical area, which means they would probably have windows and ports open to get any kind of airflow possible to breathe. And also it probably depends on how windy it is. If it was a very windless day, and then you know, it could have been that this cloud of CEO two or carbon

monoxide or whatever didn't didn't clear away quickly. Supposing it's a totally clear day, Um, they could have windows. But you know, I believe it's portholes. Portholes um. You know, modern day ships don't have that pass you know, like lower than like the fifth or sixth deck, that open um simply, you know, because a ship it rolls and you know it's on the sea and you have waves and splashes, and you don't want water on the inside

of your ship at all, like periods it's bad news. Um. So in most of the time, a ship, unless it's like a cruise line or something just isn't going to have windows. They're just knocked on. I mean, they might have a couple like in a captain's hold, like up near the top decks or something like very good point, but they are kind of weak points where they're weak points. And those ships are basically just like slap a couple

of pieces of steel together, and he's got a ship. Well, and so here's if we follow this theory down his trail. He's that then of course, once it's killed the crew, this carbon monoxide poisoning, at that point the aid would arrive. They would then realize that there was smoke happening, and that boiler room fire is then what would have made the ship catch fire and explode and sink to the bottom. Okay, and then I guess I have another problem with this

is that how quickly could the ships have responded? Right, you assume that this ship has been out for hours at least, and I don't know, you know, I don't think we have the information on distance between the ships that were responding and alright, madana or anything like that, you know, but a fire for hours. Again, I'll say, having lived on a ship, I understand that even ships

made to be fire resistant. An hour of a fire of the magnitude that could produce that much poison air is not going to allow a ship to stay afloat for then Yeah, it's not out, but then the ship is probably already sunk. Yeah, very true. Well it's conceivable that you know, one of the one of the keys to fighting fires on ships is to shut the shut that say, if it's below decks, evacuate personnel, shut the hatches, and turn and turn the diesels on it. They're not already,

that's exactly what you do. You try and starve the fire. However, in that situation, if you expose, if if the fire is not out, well exactly, somebody in the door, and you get what I don't remember what they call it the technical term, but you basically get this like fire explosion happening out background. Yes, back to exactly. So you would not then be able to like fully evacuate the ship and have it explode with all of your crew back on the ship. Right, it's a very backlash is

a really quick thing. That Okay, so but that could be let's let's let's say that the initial crew had tried to contain it and had been killed in that process, and they had bottled the ship up with the intention of killing the fire, but of course they still all die. And then the responding the rescue ship arrives and not knowing what's happening, they open a couple of doors that don't necessarily allow a huge backdraft happen. But suddenly they allow the fire to get fuel again. Then then then

that's a possibility. I guess that's true. Yeah, you know, it's my understanding of this explosion that happens, that it happens pretty immediately. But it's true that if they recording the movie that they made back in the nineties, it's super fast and vicious. It's hard to say none of us have had to experience that stories, but yeah, they

only don't know. Yeah, the only problem I have with the fires, the whole fire theory, is that the the radio operator, I think would have mentioned that there was a fire on the ship. You think that it wouldn't have been like some mysterious doug they think people are all dead. Oh now, I dot you know, And so let's let's continue on to the next theory that also deals with gas, okay, and that is methane gas and this, I admit, is kind of a far flung theory. I

haven't farfetched farfetched, thank you. I haven't found a lot of places that this is reference, and personally it doesn't hold a lot of ground for me, but we'll go over it. So the theory is is, of course, that on the ocean floor there are there's volcanic activity, and there's pockets of all kinds of stuff trapped in the earth. This theory says that the hour Ing m Dan was unfortunate enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time when there was some kind of seismic activity

and a massive pocket of methane gas was released. So run with me on this. This this is a little hard to track with, but this is this giant release of gas comes boiling out of the ocean, surrounds the ship as it's all being released, and of course the methane is going to push all the oxygen out, which is then in turn gonna kill all of the crew members because you can't breathe that gas. It doesn't explain the explosion, but it explains potentially how the crew could

have died. But if we go back to the boiler room issue, let's say the crew is suddenly dead and the boilers running hot and it's left unmanned. Then maybe that, you know, maybe these two theories come together. But I don't. I don't put a lot of stock in it. But it's something that's out there. Yeah, I think these things happen. I think we have to kind of acoms razor this right that I think too, like really unlikely events coming together.

You would think that some you know, when that that method is rising out of the ocean, there's some some crew member or a no that would have lit a smoke and you know that would have touched the entire cloud off. Yeah, you would think the boiler, right, the boiler. Yeah. So I don't. I don't hold a lot of stock in that one. Yeah, I I freely admit that. Uh So, the last theory that we have is again an unusual take, but a very interesting one, and this is Yamashita is gold.

Oh so roy is the one who told us this theory. So let's let's have him tell us how that possibility could have run That there is another possibility that this could be parts of Yamashita's gold. Are you familiar with Yamashita's gold? No, yeah, I have. I've already heard about

yams gold. Gold is like the accumulated gold Ingot's jewelry coinage and similar precious and semi precious articles which were collected from all the official storages, banks, minds, churches and temples, from all the inhabitants of all the Southeast Asian countries by the invading Japanese. It's the same thing that the Nazis did in Europe, you know, right with the conquerors

will have anything we want. And whereas the Nazis put everything into Swiss banks and then transferred it to South America after the war under himless instructions, and then five years after the war died down, all the German industrialists brought the money back into the country and you have the great economic recovery with the Japanese a lot of

their gold they had to leave too quickly. So whilst the quantity and the value can only be guessed, that it is known to have been a considerable amount of money, and it was all assembled apparently in Singapore same time they were assembling original aus gases. Now let's suppose, for instance, if we're talking about black ops, let's suppose that the Haranguema Dan was floating full of Yamashita's gold and it was intercepted by these two ships and then blown up

and sank with this wonderful, spooky cover story. You know, it's it's a far out idea, I admit, but it's you know, it's one. As many solutions as you can think of, you can just add to them, and somewhere in those lists of solutions is the answer. But we don't know what it is because the ship has been wiped out the pages of history. It's it's not there, and we are now out of theories. Yes, okay, so we've we've gone through quite a few theories and a lot of research that still kind of runs us into

dead ends. And that's all we've got. So this, I mean again, it's it could be a black op. It could be a red herring. It could be some kind of fire, it could be some kind of hijacking with the gold. It could be totally made up, totally made up. I'm kind of leaning towards that, I to admit it. I agree with Joe talking to Roy, who is you know, Mr Baby has done a ton and ton of leg

work over a long amount of time. He really has, and he does this stuff constantly, and I've got to say, if I had my to just give it a face value. When I first saw this, I didn't know. But after getting all of the facts, I personally I hate to say it. I think I think it's fake. Very well could be. But hey, let's you know, we'll leave it up to our listeners own take on it. Everybody sees something. I mean, I don't know what you think on this one, you know, and I think I think a face it's

probably fake. I think it's interesting. There are just enough records for this to be a true mystery, right. It's plausible. You know, it was in this article in a fairly reputable source of the US Coast Guard. This story. You know, you would kind of think that if this were just a fake, they wouldn't run something like that, And that was the April Fools issue. But you know, there's something to be said for like a story that's repeated so many times under the guise of being true that people

just say, oh, it's true. So I guess we'd better get on top of it. I believe the phrase that we heard in the interview was it shoehorned itself, which is a great way to put it. Yeah. So, but I you know, I understand the impulse to say it's fake, but I like, I like to root for like the Thunderdog. I really want to say that it's real, that we

just don't know. I think that that something is being suppressed, that it was during the war, right after the war, and probably somebody among our listeners are millions of listeners was involved in this operation. If it was indeed a black op, it wasn't a black op. Maybe maybe your grandfather was on the Silver Star. So you know, please contact us. Yeah, I'd also I'd also like to put it out to our listeners to We want you all to go to our website and leave us a comment

and tell us what your favorite theory is. Don't you think that's fair. I think we should listen to our listeners. Yeah, I mean I think that people there as we We've covered a bunch of theories, and you know, these are pretty much just the most viable theories. I'm sure there are many many there, and again I haven't even I'm so torn. I'm really torn on this because so many things seemed plausible and it seems like it should be real.

And then this is this is why I have to admit, guys, this is the first story that we've talked about where I've thrown up my hands and said that's it. I I'm not sure that I believe anymore. Yeah, you know. And that's that's really an interesting point. You know. We've talked about some stories where it's like, well, obviously I feel like this person is faking it, or the story has these really mundane origins and have just has just

been built up. But I think this one, in particular, there's so much yeah, here's it's really easy to say, wow, who knows, you know, It's so easy to say it's just an old wives tale, And then it's very easy to imagine that people of as we said, she hoorned this into the history books or not based on whatever, you know. I think that Roy said that he got a letter from the Dutch Navy saying, uh, we hear

you know a lot about the oreto with Dan. We would like to know what you know, please, uh you know, and it was I think that's really indicative of this story. It's that and that that it just is perfect because either it's the Navy saying okay, we need to know if we need to like off this guy or it's the Navy saying, Okay, this guy's presenting these this story in a really straightforward, a believable way, and we don't know about it, you know, so it's well, yeah, they

wanted to find out if it was true too. I mean, there's like, you know, you call our story about the Glomar explorer. Yeah, and they came up with a fictitious story that Hughes Corporation was going to mind manganese modules from the ocean floor, which was a story that's just part of the cover story and the cover side of it. Yeah,

just just a cover story. And uh and and and they actually they actually publicized it and talked it up quite a bit, to the point that a couple of other companies actually started investing huge amounts of money and doing the same thing. I mean, they really got punked by this. That all this bs and it happens to all kinds of people. That happens to news organizations and governments and everything. Yeah, I don't know, ladies and gentlemen, if you have your own theories on this, we would

love to hear about them. You can always go to our website, which is Thinking Sideways podcast dot com. Uh, feel free to leave comments on this or any of the stories that's on there. We we love to hear where the listeners have to say and what our thoughts are on the stellary. Tell us what your favorite theory is. We want to hear it. Yeah, you can't always go ahead if you want. If you you prefer to just chat with us directly because we love doing that as well.

Is get ahold of us via email, So you can send us an email at Thinking Sideways Podcast at gmail dot com. And we've gotten emails before and we've corresponded with folks back and forth, and we love to do that. We loved about these things around. So if you've got you've got something in there, and if you've got a theory that's in there that we haven't done before, let

us know and and we will go over in her. Heck, if you know a story that we haven't done and you'd like to hear us do I would absolutely love to hear from you because we have gotten some good stories in the past and I know we're going to get some good ones in the future. Yeah. With that that said, ladies and gentlemen, this ship has sailed and we're gonna wrap this one up for the night. So thank you for for taking a time to to listen to us again. We do want to give a big

shout out to Roy Baton. Roy, thank you so much for chatting with us. You really really helped us out and we appreciate it and we look forward to to chatting with Roy again in the future. I absolutely have to make that happen again. Absolutely, it was a pleasure talking to you, Roy. And by the way, after you hear the episode and you hear my outline ish new theory, just give me a call. I'm dying of all right, ladies and gentlemen, thank you again and we will talk to you next week.