FLYING DUTCHMAN

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According to folklore, the '''Flying Dutchman''' is a ghost ship that can never go home, doomed to sail the oceans forever. The ''Flying Dutchman'' is usually spotted from afar, sometimes glowing with ghostly light. If she is hailed by another ship, her crew will often try to send messages to land, to people long since dead. The sight of this phantom ship is reckoned by seafarers to be a portent of doom.

Contents

Origins

Adaptations

In art

See also

External links

Origins

Versions of the story are numerous in nautical folklore and are related to earlier medieval legends such as that of Captain Falkenburg who was cursed to ply the North Sea until Judgment Day, playing at dice with the Devil for his own soul.
The first reference in print to the ship itself appears to be in Chapter VI of George Barrington's ''Voyage to Botany Bay ''(1795):
Voyage to Botany Bay, , George, Barrington, Sydney University Press, ,
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 uncanny speed of his trips from Holland to Java and was suspected of being in league with the devil to achieve this speed.
However, the first version to appear in print seems to be that which featured in ''Blackwood's Magazine'' for May 1821. This puts the scene of the action as the Cape of Good Hope:
the 'Flying Dutchman' is a dead man on a ship.
There have been many reported sightings of the ''Flying Dutchman'' on the high seas in the 19th and 20th centuries. One of the most famous was by Prince George of Wales (later King George V of the United Kingdom). During his late adolescence, in 1880, along with his elder brother Prince Albert Victor of Wales (sons of the future King Edward VII), he was on a three-year-long voyage with their tutor Dalton aboard the 4000-tonne corvette HMS ''Bacchante''. Off the coast of Australia, between Melbourne and Sydney, Dalton records:

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, not so well-known version, of this story is that the Captain and crew were struck down with bubonic plague. When the Captain tried to dock the ship they were turned away wherever they went - nobody would risk allowing a plague-ridden ship to dock. Their water and provisions soon run out and, eventually, all on board ''The Flying Dutchman'' died. Their souls are doomed to sail the seven seas for all eternity.
Richard Wagner's famous opera on the subject: ''The Flying Dutchman'' (1843) has a somewhat convoluted genesis. It appears to be 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 one of the characters 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 whilst in London. However, unlike Fitzball's play, which has the traditional Cape of Good Hope location, in Heine's account of the imaginary play the action is transferred to the North Sea: off the coast of Scotland. This seems to be the reason that Wagner's play is also set in the North Sea, although this time off the Norwegian coast.
Another adaptation was ''The Flying Dutchman on Tappan Sea'' by Washington Irving (1855).
The Captain is called ''Van der Decken'' (meaning ''of the decks'') in Marryat's version and ''Ramhout van Dam'' in Irving's version. Sources disagree on whether "Flying Dutchman" was the name of the ship, or a nickname for her captain.
According to most versions, the captain swore that he would not retreat in the face of a storm, but would continue his attempt to round the Cape of Good Hope even if it took until Judgment Day. According to other versions, some horrible crime took place on board, or the crew was infected with the plague and not allowed to sail into any port for this reason. Since then, the ship and its crew were doomed to sail forever, never putting in to shore. According to some versions, this happened in 1641, others give the date 1680 or 1729.
Many have noted the resemblance of the ''Flying Dutchman'' legend to the Christian folk tale of the Wandering Jew.
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 to go to shore once every hundred years, in order to seek a woman to share his fate. In Wagner's opera, it is once every seven years.
Another adaptation is Brian Jacques's ''Castaways of the Flying Dutchman''. It has been modified to suit children and is a fantasy novel. It uses the ''Flying Dutchman'' as a basis for the story. It has two sequels, called ''The Angel's Command'' and ''Voyage of Slaves''.
The 1991 book Flying Dutch by British author Tom Holt is a comedic/fantasy take on the story.
In SpongeBob Squarepants, there is a recurring ghost character named ''The Flying Dutchman'' voiced by Brian Doyle-Murray, who haunts the seven seas almost like Davy Jones from the ''Pirates of the Caribbean'' film series.
In 2006, the tale of the ''Flying Dutchman'' was adapted into the ''Pirates of the Caribbean'' film series, in which the ship is portrayed as having a crew of doomed humans slowly being transformed into sea life. According to this interpretation, the captain of the ''Dutchman'' is Davy Jones, who fell in love with the sea goddess Calypso. Calypso charged him with conveying the dead at sea to the afterlife. After the first 10 years of this task, his heart was broken when Calypso did not appear and so not to suffer, he removed it, placing it into a chest. After this, he abandoned his charge and turned into the Pirate of Pirates. After finding a sinking vessel, or sinking it himself, he would offer the dead or dying one hundred years on his ship, or death. Because of his treachery and ruthlessness, Calypso cursed the ''Dutchman'' and her crew.
Carl Barks wrote an Uncle Scrooge comics story in which Scrooge McDuck and his nephews search for the ''Flying Dutchman'', hearing of a gold supply on it. When they see a ghostly image of the ship, coincidence turns fate against them, and their compass and wheel break, leaving them stranded. Fearing it is the Dutchman's curse, they sail on without choice. Eventually they find the ''Flying Dutchman'' embedded in an iceberg: the ghostly image was a reflection caused by phosphorus. Using items from the ''Flying Dutchman'' itself, they take the gold and return home.
In the ''Little Vampire'' series of graphic novels by Joann Sfar, the Flying Dutchman is also called "The Captain of the Dead" and is the leader of a happy community of ghosts and monsters.

In art

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

See also

★ Phantom vehicle

★ Terneuzen

★ El Caleuche

★ ''Mary Celeste''

★ ''Jian Seng''

★ ''High Aim 6''

★ ''MV Joyita''

★ Chasse-galerie

★ Black Pearl

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