Wagner immortalised the legend of the Flying Dutchman

Posted in Historical articles, Legend, Music, Mystery, Ships on Monday, 10 February 2014

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This edited article about the Flying Dutchman first appeared in Look and Learn issue number 548 published on 15 July 1972.

Flying Dutchman is sighted,  picture, image, illustration

Sighting of the Flying Dutchman's ship by Ralph Bruce

At one time sailors were notoriously superstitious people with a folklore which abounded with mysterious sea monsters and ghost ships whose sudden appearance out of nowhere was generally an omen for disaster. The ghost ship in particular cropped up in tale after tale, which had been handed down from one generation of seafaring men to the next. There was the slave ship which roamed he oceans of the world carrying a cargo of corpses. There was a Phantom Ship seen only in the Baltic which brought death and disaster to all those who encountered her, and there was a ship manned by skeletons which had been condemned to cruise the oceans of the world until someone had the courage to board her and say a Mass for the souls of her crew.

Today, we dismiss these stories as being nothing more than the tall tales that ancient mariners used to tell to earn themselves another tankard of ale from their open-mouthed listeners. But are we entirely justified in dismissing these stories with good natured contempt? Was there, perhaps, some element of truth in them?

Let us take for an instance one of the most fanciful legends of them all – the story of the Flying Dutchman.

First, the story itself.

Once upon a time, many centuries ago, there was a Dutch sea captain named Vanderdecken who feared neither God nor the Devil. While he was on a voyage around the Cape of Good Hope, he ran into a great storm which placed his ship in great danger, so much so that everyone on board begged him to turn back before they all inevitably perished.

But the Captain merely laughed at the fears of his crew and passengers, and instead of at least sending up a prayer to Heaven, asking for their deliverance, he began to sing blasphemous songs. Then he calmly settled down to smoke his pipe and drink his beer, like a man safely seated in a tavern at home. Even when some of the ship’s masts were broken and the sails were carried away, he merely laughed.

Finally, however, the Captain’s mood began to change as the storm persisted with such force that it kept him from rounding the Cape. Again and again he turned his prow into the teeth of the gale and tried to tack against it, but without success. It was then that he swore with a mighty oath that he would sail around the Cape, even if it took him till Doomsday.

No sooner had he uttered the oath than a Form appeared on the deck which was said to have been the Almighty Himself. Pointing a stern finger at the Captain, the Form spoke out in a loud spectral voice, saying that it would keep the Captain to his word by making him sail the ocean until the end of the world. After making this pronouncement, the Form cast a spell on the whole crew, by which they could not die and their ship could not sink. Then it disappeared on the next gust of wind.

So year in and year out the Dutchman was compelled to sail wearily without ever reaching his journey’s end. The ship became worm eaten and still it would not sink. The sails became blood red in time, and still the ship sailed on and on, until the Captain began to yearn for the death that was forever denied him.

He had but one chance to have the curse removed, and that was to find a woman who would be prepared to love him until death. To give him a chance to obtain his release he was permitted to land once in every seven years so that he might seek out such a woman.

But the story of the Flying Dutchman was now known to everyone, so that the sight of his Phantom Ship coming into port filled everyone with fear, with the result that there was not a single maiden who did not shudder at the sight of the Captain coming ashore. Unable to find a maiden who would accept him, the Captain would return each time to his ship. And thus he sailed on for all eternity.

Such then is the story of the Flying Dutchman. You might well ask how could such a fanciful story have its roots in any sort of reality.

To try to answer that question we must first investigate into whether or not there was ever a Dutch sea Captain who had mysteriously disappeared off the Cape of Good Hope.

There was indeed. His name was Bernard Fokke, and he lived in the 17th century. Moreover, he was known as a reckless and daring sailor whose fantastic feats of seamanship had earned him the reputation of being in league with the Devil. Eventually, he disappeared never to be seen again, though sailors claimed that they had seen his ghost ship in the vicinity of the Cape.

But by taking the next logical step of examining the actual legend of the Flying Dutchman we immediately run into difficulties for the simple reason that the ship in which Vanderdecken set sail on his endless quest seems to have set forth from ports in every part of the world at different times in history. This we learn from examining the sea lore of other countries where we find countless tales of similar phantom ships, sailing under some dreadful curse. This can lead to but one conclusion. Most of these legends were fused into one to make the story of the Flying Dutchman.

The next question we have to ask ourselves is how all these legends coming from different lands have the one common factor of an accursed ghost ship.

The most likely explanation is that the story was handed down from the days of the Great Plague, when ships could be seen outside the ports of Europe, manned by crews dead to the last man of the plague.

The Flying Dutchman as such, therefore, seems at the end of our trail to be still nothing more than a myth, stemming from two isolated facts in history. Even so, there is still perhaps just the faintest possibility that those who claimed to have seen the Flying Dutchman, really did see something. Whatever one does believe about it, one way or the other, it is still a good tale.

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