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Flying Dutchman

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For other uses, see Flying Dutchman (disambiguation).
The Flying Dutchman by Albert Pinkham Ryder

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 afar, 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):

I had often heard of the superstition of sailors respecting apparitions, but had never given much credit to the report; it seems that some years since a Dutch man of war was lost off the Cape of Good Hope, and every soul on board perished; her consort weathered the gale, and arrived soon after at the Cape. Having refitted, and returning to Europe, they were assailed by a violent tempest nearly in the same latitude. In the night watch some of the people saw, or imagined they saw, a vessel standing for them under a press of sail, as though she would run them down: one in particular affirmed it was the ship that had foundered in the former gale, and that it must certainly be her, or the apparition of her; but on its clearing up, the object, a dark thick cloud, disappeared. Nothing could do away the idea of this phenomenon on the minds of the sailors; and, on their relating the circumstances when they arrived in port, the story spread like wild-fire, and the supposed phantom was called the Flying Dutchman. From the Dutch the English seamen got the infatuation, and there are very few Indiamen, but what has some one on board, who pretends to have seen the apparition.[1]

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:

She was an Amsterdam vessel and sailed from port seventy years ago. Her master’s name was Captain Hendrik van der Decken. He was a staunch seaman, and would have his own way in spite of the devil. For all that, never a sailor under him had reason to complain; though how it is on board with them nobody knows. The story is this: in doubling the Cape they were a long day trying to weather the Table Bay. However, the wind headed them, and went against them more and more, and Van der Decken walked the deck, swearing at the wind. Just after sunset a vessel spoke to him, asking him if he did not mean to go into the bay that night. Van der Decken replied: 'May I be eternally damned if I do, though I should beat about here till the day of judgment.' And to be sure, he never did go into that bay, for it is believed that he continues to beat about in these seas still, and will do so long enough. This vessel is never seen but with foul weather along with her.[2]

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:

"At 4 a.m. the Flying Dutchman crossed our bows. A strange red light as of a phantom ship all aglow, in the midst of which light the masts, spars, and sails of a brig 200 yards distant stood out in strong relief as she came up on the port bow, where also the officer of the watch from the bridge clearly saw her, as did the quarterdeck midshipman, who was sent forward at once to the forecastle; but on arriving there was no vestige nor any sign whatever of any material ship was to be seen either near or right away to the horizon, the night being clear and the sea calm. Thirteen persons altogether saw her...At 10.45 a.m. the ordinary seaman who had this morning reported the Flying Dutchman fell from the foretopmast crosstrees on to the topgallant forecastle and was smashed to atoms."[3]

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.[4]

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.

The 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. Sources disagree on whether "Flying Dutchman" was the ship or a nickname for her captain.[citation needed] 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. According to some, this happened in 1641, others give 1680 or 1729.[citation needed]

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

The 1951 MGM film Pandora and the Flying Dutchman starred Ava Gardner and James Mason.

Several episodes of the television anthology series The Twilight Zone, notably "Death Ship", "The Arrival", and "Judgment Night" were adaptations of the Flying Dutchman legend.

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

Vandervecken, the second half of Larry Niven's science fiction novel Protector (1973), tells of Brennan, a man who became immortal and gained superintelligence but lost his normal human appearance and drives. Hiding from society at the edge of the solar system, he took on the role of protecting the human race. He kidnapped people for information, then wiped their memory before returning them, using the identity Vandervecken to provide a bank account in payment for silence. One victim got a clue from a backpacker song, "I'm the only tar who's e'er jumped ship from Vandervecken's crew," and made the connection to the missing immortal, Brennan. Self-mockingly, Brennan also named his spaceship the Flying Dutchman.

A 1976 episode of Land of the Lost, from its third season, is titled "The Flying Dutchman" and features the ship and its captain.

The 1991 book Flying Dutch by British author Tom Holt is a comedic/fantasy story.

In Celia Rees's 2003 novel, Pirates! the captain ignores his crew and passengers and tries to sail around the Cape of Good Hope in a storm. God appears in response to the prayers of those aboard, but the captain orders him away shouting "There is but one captain here!" and so was doomed to spend eternity sailing.

The children's television show, SpongeBob SquarePants, depicts the Flying Dutchman as a pirate ghost and his ship is unnamed. The Flying Dutchman terrorizes the citizens of Bikini Bottom which is Spongebob's hometown. However, in some episodes the Flying Dutchman interacts with Spongebob in a less-than-menacing way, such as teaching him to tie knots.

Another adaptation is Brian Jacques's 2001 children's fantasy novel, Castaways of the Flying Dutchman. It has two sequels, called The Angel's Command and Voyage of Slaves.

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 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, allowing one day on land (sunrise to sunset) every ten years. After the first ten years, his heart was broken when Calypso did not appear. So, as not to suffer, he removed it and placed it into a chest. After this, he abandoned his charge and turned into a monster. After finding a sinking vessel, or sinking it himself, he would offer the dead or dying 100 years on his ship, or death. Angered by Jones' treachery, Calypso cursed the Dutchman and her crew.

In the Little Vampire series of graphic novels by Joan Sfar, the Flying Dutchman, also known as The Captain of the Dead, is the leader of a happy community of ghosts and monsters haunting a huge haunted mansion.

Possible explanation

Probably the most credible explanation might be a superior mirage or Fata Morgana (mirage) seen at sea [5]

Book illustration showing superior mirages of two boats

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.

The captain should have used the word refraction and not a 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.

File:Dd-flying-dutchman072.jpg
AFOUL OF THE FLYING DUTCHMAN by Carl Barks

In Uncle Scrooge Carl Barks wrote about Scrooge McDuck and his nephews searching for the Flying Dutchman. They were terrified by seeing a yacht with red sails flying in the sky. Later they found that the image was caused by reflection of a shipwreck frozen in iceberg caused by phosphorus. Although the story does not refer to Fata Morgana, important words here are iceberg and reflection.

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.

  • This eight frames image show how fata morgana is changing constantly the appearance of the two ships. Four frames in the first column is ship # 1, and four frames in the second column is ship # 2
    This eight frames image show how fata morgana is changing constantly the appearance of the two ships. Four frames in the first column is ship # 1, and four frames in the second column is ship # 2
  • At least three boats are seen on the image. The "real" one and the uppermost are in the up right position, the one in the middle in inverted,
    At least three boats are seen on the image. The "real" one and the uppermost are in the up right position, the one in the middle in inverted,
  • Few frames of Fata Morgana of a ship demonstrate how the miraged image is changing.
    Few frames of Fata Morgana of a ship demonstrate how the miraged image is changing.


In art and music

See also

References

  1. ^ Barrington, George (2004 [1795]). Voyage to Botany Bay. Sydney: Sydney University Press. p. 30. ISBN 1920897208. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  2. ^ Music with Ease (2008). "Source of the Legend of The Flying Dutchman". Music with Ease. Retrieved 2008-02-23.
  3. ^ Rose, Kenneth (1988) King George V
  4. ^ Meyer-Arendt, Jurgen (1995 [1972]). Introduction to Modern and Classical Optics. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc. p. 431. ISBN 0-13-124356-X. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  5. ^ Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy by Frank R. Stockton
  6. ^ "http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=108921&page=2". Newsgroup: Radio Room forums SUBSIM Radio Room forums. March 24, 2007. Retrieved 12 October 2008. {{cite newsgroup}}: Check |newsgroup= value (help); External link in |title= (help)
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