The directory «Plots»

Flying Dutchman

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

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.

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.

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.

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:

"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."

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 ran 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. 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.

Austria, 1995, Set for «The Flying Dutchman»

DDR, 1963, Richard Wagner, «The Flying Dutchman»

Germany, 1933, The Flying Dutchman

Sierra Leone, 1996, Flying Dutchman