The Flying Dutchman, according to folklore, is a ghost ship that can never go home, doomed to sail the oceans forever. The Flying Dutchman is usually spotted from far away, sometimes glowing with ghostly light. It is said that if hailed by another ship, its crew will try to send messages to land or to people long dead. In ocean lore, the sight of this phantom ship is a portent of doom.

Origins

Versions of the story are numerous in nautical folklore and related to medieval legends such as Captain Falkenburg, who was cursed to ply the North Sea until Judgment Day, playing dice with the Devil for his own soul.

The first reference in print to the ship itself appears in Chapter VI of George Barrington's Voyage to Botany Bay (1795):

According to some sources, the 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 Holland to Java and suspected of being in league with the devil. However, the first version in print, in Blackwood's Magazine for May 1821, puts the scene as the Cape of Good Hope:

There have been many reported sightings in the 19th and 20th centuries. One was by Prince George of Wales (later King George V of the United Kingdom). During his late adolescence, in 1880, with his elder brother Prince Albert Victor of Wales (sons of the future King Edward VII), he was on a three-year voyage with their tutor Dalton aboard the 4,000-tonne corvette Bacchante. Off Australia, between Melbourne and Sydney, Dalton records:

Possible explanation

Probably the most credible explanation might be a superior mirage or Fata Morgana seen at sea.



The captain should have used the word refraction and not reflection while explaining the phenomenon to his crew. Folklore associates the Flying Dutchman with the North Sea. Its icy water is one of the best places to see a superior mirage.

A superior mirage (Fata Morgana) of a ship might take different faces. Even if a boat does not seem to fly, it looks ghostly, unusual, deserted and ever changing appearance. Sometimes Fata Morgana makes a ship float inside waves, other times an inverted ship sails above its "real" companion. Sometimes it is hard to say what is real and what is not. If a real ship is behind the horizon Fata Morgana would bring it up, and then everything seen by the observer is a mirage. If a real ship is above the horizon, its image will still be distorted by Fata Morgana.

Scientists have offered a more recent explanation. An 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

This story was adapted in the English melodrama The Flying Dutchman (1826) by Edward Fitzball 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. Another version is that the captain and crew were struck with bubonic plague. When the captain tried to dock they were turned away - nobody would risk allowing a plague-ridden ship. Their water and provisions ran out and all on board died. Their souls are doomed to sail the seven seas for eternity.

Richard Wagner's opera, The Flying Dutchman (1843) has a convoluted genesis. It appears 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. This imaginary play appears to be a pastiche by Heine of Fitzball's play, which Heine may have seen in London. However, unlike Fitzball's play, which has the Cape of Good Hope location, in Heine's account the imaginary play is transferred to the North Sea off Scotland. This seems the reason Wagner's play is also set in the North Sea, although this time off Norway. Another adaptation was The Flying Dutchman on Tappan Sea by Washington Irving (1855).

Edgar Allan Poe makes a likely allusion to the Flying Dutchman in Chapter 10 of his novel The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket (1838). Pym and his fellow Grampus crew members encounter a Dutch brig in the South Seas. It initially appears that one of the brig's crew is leaning over the bow, smiling and nodding toward the Grampus with great interest. Upon drawing closer, Pym realizes that the "smiling man" is in fact a corpse whose back is being pecked by a seagull. Pym further observes some twenty-five or thirty corpses scattered on board.

Captain of the Dutchman

The captain is called Van der Decken (of the decks) in Marryat's version and Ramhout van Dam in Irving's. Most versions say the captain swore he would continue round the Cape of Good Hope in a storm even if it took until Judgment Day. Other versions say some crime took place on board, or the crew was infected with plague and not allowed to sail into port. Since then, the ship and its crew were doomed to sail forever.

In Marryat's version Terneuzen in the Netherlands is described as the home of Captain Van der Decken. In Fitzball's play, the captain is allowed ashore every 100 years to seek a woman. In Wagner's opera, it is every seven years, and in the film series, Pirates of the Caribbean, every ten years.

Italian author Emilio Salgari depicts the Flying Dutchman in one of the tales of his compilation Le novelle marinaresche di Mastro Catrame

Modern adaptations

Film and television

• Pandora and the Flying Dutchman, a 1951 MGM film, starred Ava Gardner and James Mason
• The Twilight Zone episodes based on the Flying Dutchman legend included "Death Ship", "The Arrival", and "Judgment Night".
• The Nickelodeon television show Spongebob Squarepants features a ghost character named Flying Dutchman, voiced by Brian Doyle-Murray.
• The Pirates of the Caribbean movies feature a ship named Flying Dutchman, crewed by doomed humans being transformed into sea life, and captained by Davy Jones, portrayed by Bill Nighy.
• Peter Graves starred as Captain Erik Von Voorten on an episode of Fantasy Island in 1982. His character was searching for a woman who would love him enough to take his place and end his curse.
• The 1982 Doctor Who episode Mawdryn Undead involved a group of mutant aliens imprisoned in a spaceship condemned to fly in perpetual orbit, allowed to land on a planet every 70 years in order to find help for their affliction.
• On the television show The Simpsons, the Sea Captain owns a seafood restaurant called The Frying Dutchman

Novels

• Protector, a 1973 science fiction novel by Larry Niven, tells of Brennan, an immortal who uses the alias Vandervecken and who named his spaceship the Flying Dutchman
• Flying Dutch is a 1991 fantasy story by British author Tom Holt
• Castaways of the Flying Dutchman is a 2001 children's fantasy by Brian Jacques

Paintings

• The Flying Dutchman has been captured in a painting by Albert Ryder in the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C., and a painting by Howard Pyle, an artist famous for illustrations of pirates

Opera

• Richard Wagner wrote an opera called Der Fliegende Holländer (The Flying Dutchman) in 1843

Radio

• A 14 January 1965 episode of the radio drama Theater Five featured a similar tale set around a space station.

Songs

• Jethro Tull sang "The Flying Dutchman" on their 1979 album Stormwatch
• "Flying Dutchman" was a Tori Amos B-side release
• Soul Capture 1562 is a death metal adaptation of the legend by Dutch band God Dethroned

Other

• The Flying Dutchman is a slogan painted on airplanes of KLM. It was also used as an advertising campaign in the 1930s together with the slogan: "From legend to reality."
• Vliegende Hollander is a Flying Dutchman themed roller coaster at the Efteling theme park in the Netherlands
• "The Flying Dutchman" was the nickname of Pittsburgh Pirates shortstop Honus Wagner.
• Football player Dennis_Bergkamp was nicknamed The Non-Flying Dutchman due to his fear of flying.
• The Flying Dutchman is the mascot of Hope College in Holland, Michigan, USA
• Rugby Union player Tim Visser is nicknamed The Flying Dutchman, due to his speed as a winger for Scottish team Edinburgh Rugby.

See also

• Caleuche (mythical ghost ship)

References

External links

• On the history and sightings of the Flying Dutchman
• Mainly about Wagner's possible sources
• Source of the legend of the Flying Dutchman
• Melodramatic Possessions: The Flying Dutchman, South Africa and the Imperial Stage ca. 1830
• The Phantom Ship by Marryat at Project Gutenberg