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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.
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THE FLYING DUTCHMAN TICKETS
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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):
"ref">[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:
"ref">[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:
"ref">[3]
There is however another version, told as a legend in the
Netherlands, but best known in the province
Zeeland.
Insert the text of the quote here, without quotation marks.
Possible explanation
Probably the most credible explanation might be a superior
mirage or
Fata Morgana seen at
sea.
[4]
“
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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.
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.
[5]
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. 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.
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.
;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, DC, 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
;Other
- 'The Flying Dutchman' art installation and video by Berlin artist Wolfgang Ganter, exhibiting at Baer Ridgway Exhibitions in San Francisco, CA. [6] [7]
- Vliegende Hollander is a Flying Dutchman themed roller coaster at the Efteling theme park in the Netherlands [8]
- "The Flying Dutchman" was the nickname of Pittsburgh Pirates shortstop Honus Wagner. [9]
References
- Voyage to Botany Bay
- Source of the Legend of The Flying Dutchman
- Rose, Kenneth (1988) ''King George V''
- Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy by Frank R. Stockton
- Introduction to Modern and Classical Optics
- http://www.baerridgway.com/Baer_Ridgway_Exhibitions/Wolfgang_Ganter_-_The_Flying_Dutchman.html
- http://www.baerridgway.com/Baer_Ridgway_Exhibitions/News_-_Artforum:_Wolfgang_Ganter.html
- http://www.rcdb.com/id3291.htm
- http://www.clpgh.org/exhibit/neighborhoods/oakland/oak_n104.html