The Flying Dutchman

There are few ghost stories as enduring as the legend of the Flying Dutchman. The tale of the ghost ship doomed to sail the seas forever is perhaps the most famous of maritime legends. But there are in fact several versions of the story, and it is unclear exactly how and when the legend began.

There are some details that remain consistent across each version, however. The curse laid on the ship, to sail on a never-ending voyage from which she can never make port, is usually said to be punishment for some great sin committed by her captain, and sometimes by her crew. In many versions of the tale, the vessel is said to glow with an ethereal light. Sighting the ship, which is often accompanied by bad weather, is always taken as an extremely bad omen. Many vessels are said to have met disaster shortly after an encounter with the phantom.

The tale is generally believed to have originated in the seventeenth century, though the oldest extant versions date from the eighteenth. According to one version of the story, the captain of the Flying Dutchman made a pact with the Devil in exchange for the fastest ship on the seas. Another version names the captain as one Hendrick van der Decken, and identifies the ship as an East Indiaman that sailed from Amsterdam for the Dutch settlement at Batavia around 1680. The voyage was uneventful until the ship reached the Cape of Good Hope, when a sudden storm wrecked the rudder and tore the sails to shreds. The crew, believing the storm to be a warning from God, advised the captain to abandon his attempt to round the Cape.  In a rage, van der Decken is said to have rejected their pleas to make for port, swearing an oath that he would remain at sea until the Judgement Day rather than do so. In retribution for his defiance of the Almighty, so the story goes, he was sentenced to do just that.

According to other tellings, however, the captain’s crime was to kill his wife and brother, who he wrongly suspected of having an affair. In still other versions, the vessel is a pirate ship, cursed for some dreadful crime committed by her crew. Some witnesses claim to have seen skeletal figures manning the rigging, or the captain himself begging for mercy from the heavens. Others say that the Dutchman tries to lure other ships on to the rocks, so that the sailors will drown and be forced to join the crew of the phantom ship. Supposedly, a member of the Dutchman’s crew can gain rest only if another sailor takes his place. There are other versions, however, which say that the captain may visit shore once every seven years, searching for the love of a good woman, the one thing that can break the curse. It is claimed that, if hailed, the crew of the ghost ship will offer letters for delivery to long-dead people on land. Accepting these, however, is certain to bring misfortune.

     

There have been countless reported sightings of the spectral vessel over the years, in locations all across the globe, but particularly in the waters around the Cape of Good Hope. There were sporadic reports throughout the nineteenth century. The captain of HMS Leven, a Royal Navy warship, recorded two sightings of the Dutchman in 1823. Twelve years later, another British ship encountered an old-fashioned vessel heading straight for them in the midst of a terrible storm, which vanished just as a collision seemed inevitable. And in 1879 the SS Pretoria also encountered the ghost ship after changing course in response to strange lights, which were taken to be a distress signal. The crew of the steamer reported sighting a strange sailing vessel, which vanished when the Pretoria approached.

One of the most famous nineteenth century encounters involved a young British prince, who later went on to become King George V. In 1881 he was serving as a midshipman aboard the ironclad frigate HMS Bacchante. On July 11 of that year, while sailing off the coast of Australia between Sydney and Melbourne, he recorded in his diary: “At 4am, the Flying Dutchman crossed our bows.” The apparition was sighted on this occasion by thirteen witnesses. The prince’s tutor, John Dalton, who accompanied him on the Bacchante, described the ghost ship as being aglow with a red light. A few hours later, the lookout who had been the first to spot the Dutchman fell from the topmast and was killed.  

Sightings continued during the twentieth century. In 1911, the Orkney Belle, an American whaling ship, seemed about to collide with the Dutchman off the Cape Peninsula, until the ghost ship performed her usual trick and vanished. In 1923, a century after HMS Leven encountered the phantom, it was again sighted by Royal Navy personnel. One of the witnesses, Fourth Officer Stone, drew a picture of the ghost ship. The vessel, which they studied through binoculars, was reported to be glowing with an eerie light and to have a transparent mist where sails should be. Stone, and Second Officer Bennett, another witness, were subsequently interviewed by the Society for Psychical Research about their experience.

Another well publicised incident took place in March 1939, on Glencairn Beach on the tip of South Africa. Several dozen people on the beach reported seeing a fully rigged sailing ship suddenly appear out of the haze, her sails drawing well despite a lack of wind. Just as the ship appeared to be heading for destruction on the coast, she vanished as suddenly as she had appeared. Numerous articles about the incident appeared in newspapers the following day, with various theories being advanced to explain the sighting. The obvious explanation for the mystery ship was a mirage – that the people on the beach had seen a naturally refracted image of a ship sailing somewhere over the horizon. But witnesses stated that the ship was quite unlike any modern sailing ship, and was of a design that last sailed more than two centuries earlier. Several identified her as a Dutch East Indiaman.

In 1942, the Dutchman reportedly sailed into Table Bay. In the same year, the phantom vessel was sighted in the waters off the Cape by HMS Jubilee, which changed course to avoid a collision. In 1943, an Australian naval vessel, HMAS Beresford, disappeared while travelling westward towards the Cape. Before her disappearance, Beresford broke wartime radio silence to broadcast her final signal, a two-word message: ‘Flying Dutchman’.

The Dutchman does indeed appear to have been very active during the wartime years. Two witnesses aboard an American warship, USS Knight, claimed to have seen the phantom in broad daylight, approaching their convoy on a voyage to South Africa in 1944. They described her as an old-fashioned vessel with tattered sails, looking as though she was beating into a gale, which came within two thousand yards of their vessel before vanishing. Fearing ridicule, however, the two seamen did not officially report the sighting. The German Navy also had encounters with the Dutchman during the course of the war. Admiral Karl Doenitz recorded that several of his U-boat captains had encountered the ghost ship, particularly off the Cape peninsula. Most of these vessels were lost quite soon afterwards. One reported witness, however, the U-boat ace Otto Kretchmer, survived his encounter with the ghost ship, though another submarine from his wolf-pack was subsequently lost.   

Sightings continued after the war. In October 1955 witnesses aboard a Samoan yacht, the Joyita, apparently reported sighting a fast-moving galleon following their vessel. The following month, the Joyita was found abandoned north of Fiji, her passengers and crew missing. In the same year, the phantom ship was reportedly spotted from shore, by witnesses in a Cape Town café. And in 1959, the crew of the Dutch freighter Straat Magelhaen reported a near collision with the Flying Dutchman. The phantom ship was reportedly under full sail and a figure could be seen at the wheel.

There have been no well-authenticated sightings of the Flying Dutchman in recent years, leading some to speculate that the phantom ship and her crew may at last have been released from their curse. Others believe that the Dutchman still roams the seas, waiting to catch some unlucky vessel and her occupants unawares….