Ghost Ship Sightings : Story of the Flying Dutchman Legend
Throughout maritime history, ships that have left for distant destinations have been wrecked, defeated by overly strong natural elements. Some of them have not joined the immense cemetery of the abysses and continue to tirelessly haunt the seas.
A reddish halo
Many sailors claim to have witnessed its numerous appearances. The most famous of them remains the young Duke of York, future King George V of England. The duke, then aged 16, sailed as a Royal Navy teacher aboard the HMS Bacchante, which sailed around the world. In the night of July 11 to 12, 1881, while the ship was off the Australian coast, a gleam suddenly shone in the dark and, about 200 meters away, a brig appeared surrounded by a sinister reddish halo cutting the road of the HMS Bacchante. The masts and yards of the ghost ship stand out clearly against this strange phosphorescent light.
Strange deaths
The watch sign is immediately sent to the forecastle, but the ship has already mysteriously disappeared in the clear night and he sees nothing. The Duke of York and twelve other members of the crew are the only spectators of this strange phenomenon. The future George V is convinced to have seen the famous Flying Dutchman, a mythical ghost ship, even if the type of the ship does not really correspond. The same night, it is said, the sailor who first saw the spectral ship fell from one of the masts and killed himself. A few weeks later, the fleet admiral died. For some, these dramatic events are linked to the strange vision that no rational explanation has so far managed to clarify.
Real story of the Flying Dutchman legend
The legend of the ghost ship, commanded by a “flying Dutchman”, dates back to the 17th century, but it varies according to the versions. According to one of them, the master of the ship - the Dutchman - is a captain named Barend Fokke who lived in Amsterdam around the 1650s. His anger and his orgies are famous among sailors, and his ship is the fastest of all; he went from Amsterdam to Batavia in three months, an exceptional feat at the time which for many could only be explained by the intervention of the devil. Also, when he disappears at sea, a belief is born which makes him cross the oceans forever, cursed for having made a pact similar to that of Faust. In other versions, the sad hero of the legend is Captain Van der Staten, who suffers the same punishment for having set sail on Good Friday.
Another version of the Flying Dutchman story
But the most widespread legend depicts Captain Van der Decken. On board his ship, he is en route from Holland to the East Indies when a violent storm breaks off off the Cape of Good Hope. Madly confident in his navigational skills, and despite the pleas of his crew, Van der Decken arrogantly challenge the Almighty to sink him. He escapes shipwreck, but, in punishment for his blasphemy, he is condemned to forever sail on the seas ...
The story is peddled orally for several centuries before the German poet Heinrich Heine, in 1830, drew a written work from it; the wandering sailor is delivered from his curse by the love of a woman, who accepts to die to allow him to find rest. And his ship with red sails is finally engulfed by the waves ... Richard Wagner draws inspiration from the text of this story to compose, in 1843, his opera The Flying Dutchman.
Some ghost ship sightings attributed to the Flying Dutchman
In 1887, the crew of the American ship Orion, en route from San Francisco to China, noticed an old three-masted ship lit by a strange white light. For a moment, the ghost ship approaches and then it suddenly disappears when the rays of the moon are clouded. It has all its fabric, while a very violent wind blows.
In 1939, a similar boat was seen from the mainland by a hundred people on a beach in South Africa, southeast of Cape Town. The ship, which still has all its sails out, crosses the sea at high speed although there is not the slightest breeze. It mysteriously vanishes in an instant.
The strange three-masted is once again seen in 1942, at Mouille Point, near Cape Town, an ancient silhouette approaching Table Bay. Then, its sightings become rare. The era of modern ships seems to have dealt the Flying Dutchman legend and that of the ghost ship a fatal blow, as to a certain romanticism of the sea.
