Flying Dutchman

The Flying Dutchman () is a legendary ghost ship which was said to never be able to make port, doomed to sail the oceans forever. The myth is likely to have originated from the 17th-century Golden Age of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) and Dutch maritime power. The oldest extant version of the legend has been dated to the late 18th century. According to the legend, if hailed by another ship, the crew of the "Flying Dutchman" was said to try to send messages to land, or to people long dead. Purported sightings in the 19th and 20th centuries claimed that the ship glowed with a ghostly light. In ocean lore, the sight of this phantom ship is a portent of doom.
Origins.
The first print reference to the ship appears in "Travels in various part of Europe, Asia and Africa during a series of thirty years and upward" (1790) by John MacDonald:
The next literary reference appears in Chapter VI of "A Voyage to Botany Bay" (1795) (also known as "A Voyage to New South Wales"), attributed to George Barrington (1755–1804):
The next literary reference introduces the motif of punishment for a crime, in "Scenes of Infancy" (Edinburgh, 1803) by John Leyden (1775–1811):
Thomas Moore (1779–1852) places the vessel in the north Atlantic in his poem "Written on passing Dead-man's Island in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, Late in the evening, September, 1804": "Fast gliding along, a gloomy bark / Her sails are full, though the wind is still, / And there blows not a breath her sails to fill." A footnote adds: "The above lines were suggested by a superstition very common among sailors, who call this ghost-ship, I think, 'the flying Dutch-man'."
Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832), a friend of John Leyden's, was the first to refer to the vessel as a pirate ship, writing in the notes to "Rokeby; a poem" (first published December 1812) that the ship was "originally a vessel loaded with great wealth, on board of which some horrid act of murder and piracy had been committed" and that the apparition of the ship "is considered by the mariners as the worst of all possible omens".
According to some sources, 17th-century Dutch captain Bernard Fokke is the model for the captain of the ghost ship. Fokke was renowned for the speed of his trips from the Netherlands to Java and was suspected of being in league with the Devil. The first version of the legend as a story was printed in "Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine" for May 1821, which puts the scene as the Cape of Good Hope. This story introduces the name Captain Hendrick Van der Decken for the captain and the motifs (elaborated by later writers) of letters addressed to people long dead being offered to other ships for delivery, but if accepted will bring misfortune; and the captain having sworn to round the Cape of Good Hope though it should take until the day of judgment.
Reported sightings.
There have been many reported or alleged sightings in the 19th and 20th centuries. A well-known sighting was by Prince George of Wales, the future King George V. He was on a three-year voyage during his late adolescence in 1880 with his elder brother Prince Albert Victor of Wales and their tutor John Neill Dalton. They temporarily shipped into after the damaged rudder was repaired in their original ship, the 4,000-tonne corvette "Bacchante". The princes' log (indeterminate as to which prince, due to later editing before publication) records the following for the pre-dawn hours of 11 July 1881, off the coast of Australia in the Bass Strait between Melbourne and Sydney:
Nicholas Monsarrat, the novelist who wrote "The Cruel Sea", described the phenomenon in the Pacific Ocean in his unfinished final book "Master Mariner", which was partly inspired by this tale (he lived and worked in South Africa after the war) and the story of the Wandering Jew.
Explanations as an optical illusion.
Probably the most credible explanation is a superior mirage or Fata Morgana seen at sea.
The news soon spread through the vessel that a phantom-ship with a ghostly crew was sailing in the air over a phantom-ocean, and that it was a bad omen, and meant that not one of them should ever see land again. The captain was told the wonderful tale, and coming on deck, he explained to the sailors that this strange appearance was caused by the reflection of some ship that was sailing on the water below this image, but at such a distance they could not see it. There were certain conditions of the atmosphere, he said, when the sun's rays could form a perfect picture in the air of objects on the earth, like the images one sees in glass or water, but they were not generally upright, as in the case of this ship, but reversed—turned bottom upwards. This appearance in the air is called a mirage. He told a sailor to go up to the foretop and look beyond the phantom-ship. The man obeyed, and reported that he could see on the water, below the ship in the air, one precisely like it. Just then another ship was seen in the air, only this one was a steamship, and was bottom-upwards, as the captain had said these mirages generally appeared. Soon after, the steamship itself came in sight. The sailors were now convinced, and never afterwards believed in phantom-ships.
Another optical effect known as looming occurs when rays of light are bent across different refractive indices. This could make a ship just off the horizon appear hoisted in the air.
Adaptations.
There is a 20-foot one-design high-performance two-person monohull racing dinghy named the "Flying Dutchman" (FD). It made its Olympic debut at the 1960 Summer Games competitions in the Gulf of Naples and is still one of the fastest racing dinghies in the world.
In artworks and design.
"The Flying Dutchman" has been captured in paintings by Albert Ryder, now in the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C., and by Howard Pyle, whose painting of the "Flying Dutchman" is on exhibit at the Delaware Art Museum.
In film.
The story was dramatised in the 1951 film "Pandora and the Flying Dutchman", starring James Mason (who plays the Dutch Captain Hendrick Van der Decken) and Ava Gardner (who plays Pandora). In this version, the Flying Dutchman is a man, not a ship. The two-hour long film, scripted by its director Albert Lewin, sets the main action on the Mediterranean coast of Spain during the summer of 1930. Centuries earlier the Dutchman had killed his wife, wrongly believing her to be unfaithful. At his trial he is unrepentant and curses God. Providence condemned him to roam the seas until he found the true meaning of love. In the only plot device taken from earlier versions of the story, once every seven years the Dutchman is allowed ashore for six months to search for a woman who will love him enough to die for him, releasing him from his curse, and he finds her in Pandora.
In the "Pirates of the Caribbean" films, the ship made its first appearance in under the command of the fictional captain, Davy Jones. The story and attributes of the ship were inspired by the actual "Flying Dutchman" of nautical lore.
In literature.
The 1797–98 poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner", contains a similar account of a ghost ship, which may have been influenced by the tale of the "Flying Dutchman". One of the first "Flying Dutchman" short stories was titled "Vanderdecken's Message Home; or, the Tenacity of Natural Affection" and was published in "Blackwood's" during 1821.
Dutch poet J. Slauerhoff published a number of related poems, particularly in his 1928 volume "Eldorado".
This story was adapted in the English melodrama "The Flying Dutchman; or the Phantom Ship: a Nautical Drama, in three acts" (1826) by Edward Fitzball (1792–1873), music by George Rodwell, and the novel "The Phantom Ship" (1839) by Frederick Marryat. This in turn was later adapted as "Het Vliegend Schip" ("The Flying Ship") by the Dutch clergyman, A. H. C. Römer. In Marryat's version, Terneuzen, in the Netherlands, is described as the home of the captain, who is called "Van der Decken" ("of the decks").
Another adaptation was "The Flying Dutchman on Tappan Sea" by Washington Irving (1855), in which the captain is named Ramhout van Dam. Irving had already used the story (based on Moore's poem) in his "Bracebridge Hall" (1822). Hedvig Ekdal describes visions of the "Flying Dutchman" from the books she reads in the attic in Henrik Ibsen's "The Wild Duck" (1884).
John Boyle O'Reilly's "The Flying Dutchman" was first published in "The Wild Goose", a handwritten newspaper produced by Fenian convicts being transported to Western Australia in 1867.
"The Death Ship", by W. Clark Russell, was published in 1888. It is narrated by Geoffrey Fenton, descendant of Edward Fenton, second mate of the English ship "Saracen" on a voyage to the East Indies in 1796. Fenton's ship encounters the "Flying Dutchman", and an accident leaves him stranded aboard the cursed ship with her ghostly crew. The captain, Cornelius Vanderdecken, tells Fenton that his ship, the "Braave", sailed from Batavia in 1653.
British author Brian Jacques wrote a trilogy of fantasy/young adult novels concerning two reluctant members of the "Dutchman"s crew, a young boy and his dog, who were swept off the ship by a wave on the night the ship was cursed; however, the same angel who pronounced the curse on the ship and crew appeared to them and blessed them, charging them to help those in need . The first novel was titled "Castaways of the Flying Dutchman" and was first published by Puffin Books in 2001. The second was titled "The Angel's Command" and was released by Puffin in 2003. The third and final book of the trilogy (due to Jacques' death in 2011) was titled "Voyage of Slaves" and was released by Puffin in 2006.
In the novel "The Flying Dutchman" (2013) by the Russian novelist Anatoly Kudryavitsky, the ghost ship rebuilds itself from an old barge abandoned on the bank of a big Russian river, and offers itself as a refuge to a persecuted musicologist.
The comic fantasy "Flying Dutch" by Tom Holt is a version of the "Flying Dutchman" story. In this version, the Dutchman is not a ghost ship but crewed by immortals who can only visit land once every seven years when the unbearable smell that is a side-effect of the elixir of life wears off.
The Roger Zelazny short story "And Only I Am Escaped to Tell Thee" tells of a sailor who escapes from the "Flying Dutchman" and is rescued by sailors who welcome him to the Mary Celeste.
Ward Moore in his 1951 story "Flying Dutchman" used the myth as a metaphor for an automated bomber plane which continues to fly over an Earth where humanity long since totally destroyed itself and all life in a nuclear war.
In Craig Alanson's novel series "Expeditionary Force", the Flying Dutchman is a large alien starship that has been commandeered by the human protagonist Joe Bishop, an ancient AI and a multi-national military and civilian crew - who named the ship.
In the sci-fi novel series "The Expanse" by James S.A. Corey, a mysterious alien presence causes entire ships to disappear when passing through transdimensional gateways. Until humanity came to understand the exact nature of the phenomenon, ships lost in this way were described as "going Dutchman".
In opera and theatre.
Richard Wagner's opera "The Flying Dutchman" (1843) is adapted from an episode in Heinrich Heine's satirical novel "The Memoirs of Mister von Schnabelewopski" ("Aus den Memoiren des Herrn von Schnabelewopski") (1833), in which a character attends a theatrical performance of "The Flying Dutchman" in Amsterdam. Heine had first briefly used the legend in his "Reisebilder: Die Nordsee" ("Pictures of Travel: the North Sea") (1826), which simply repeats from "Blackwood's Magazine" the features of the vessel being seen in a storm and sending letters addressed to persons long since dead. In his 1833 elaboration, it was once thought that it may have been based on Fitzball's play, which was playing at the Adelphi Theatre in London, but the run had ended on 7 April 1827 and Heine did not arrive in London until the 14th. Heine was the first author to introduce the chance of salvation through a woman's devotion and the opportunity to set foot on land every seven years to seek a faithful wife. This imaginary play, unlike Fitzball's play, which has the Cape of Good Hope location, in Heine's account is transferred to the North Sea off Scotland. Wagner's opera was similarly planned to take place off the coast of Scotland, although during the final rehearsals he transferred the action to another part of the North Sea, off Norway.
Pierre-Louis Dietsch composed an opera "Le vaisseau fantôme, ou Le maudit des mers" ("The Phantom Ship, or The Accursed of the Sea"), which was first performed on 9 November 1842 at the Paris Opera. The libretto by Paul Foucher and H. Révoil was based on Walter Scott's "The Pirate" as well as Captain Marryat's "The Phantom Ship" and other sources, although Wagner thought it was based on the scenario of his own opera, which he had just sold to the Opera. The similarity of Dietsch's opera to Wagner's is slight, although Wagner's assertion is often repeated. Berlioz thought "Le vaisseau fantôme" too solemn, but other reviewers were more favourable.
Dutchman (play), a short play by Amiri Baraka, was first performed in 1964.
In radio drama.
The tale was the subject of the radio drama "The Witch's Tale" broadcast on 1 February 1932.
The story was adapted by Judith French into a play, "The Dutch Mariner", broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on 13 April 2003.
In video games.
In the 1993 multiplatform game "Alone in the Dark 2", fictional detective Edward Carnby investigates a missing girl who he discovers has been kidnapped by the undead One-Eyed Jack who, in the game, is captain of the undead crew of "The Flying Dutchman".
"The Flying Dutchman" is depicted in "Terraria" as a flying wooden ship with four destructible, broadside cannons. It appears within the Pirate Invasion as a boss enemy.
In 2017, the online FPS game Paladins added a Flying Dutchman skin for its Makoa character.
In 2020, the online FPS game Overwatch added a Flying Dutchman skin for its Dutch character, Sigma.
In leisure.
The Efteling amusement park in the Netherlands has a roller coaster called The Flying Dutchman which features the captain named Willem van der Decken ().
Worlds of Fun amusement park in Kansas City, Missouri has a swinging boat ride called The Flying Dutchman.
Six Flags over Georgia, an amusement park located in Austell, Georgia also had a swinging boat ride called The Flying Dutchman which was added in 1980.
In aviation.
The Dutch aviation pioneer and an aircraft manufacturer Anthony Fokker was nicknamed "The Flying Dutchman".
KLM Royal Dutch Airlines references the endless traveling aspect of the story by having "The Flying Dutchman" painted on the rear sides of all its aircraft with regular livery.
In education.
The nickname of Lebanon Valley College is "The Flying Dutchmen", and its mascot "The Flying Dutchman". The nickname references the college's location in the Pennsylvania Dutch Country.
Hofstra University on Long Island, New York was unofficially named "The Flying Dutchman" and has many references to Dutch culture around the university including residence halls.
Hope College in Holland, Michigan is also the home of "The Flying Dutchman" because it was founded by settlers from the Netherlands in 1866.
In Sailing.
Flying Dutchman Dinghy
In sports.
Baseball.
Honus Wagner was nicknamed "The Flying Dutchman" due to his superb speed and German heritage.
Auto racing.
Dutch driver Arie Luyendyk, two-time champion of the Indianapolis 500 and still record-holder for the quickest time ever run to qualify for the race in 1996, was nicknamed the Flying Dutchman by fans and media.
Football.
Dutch football player Dennis Bergkamp was nicknamed "the Non-Flying Dutchman", because of his fear of flying.