The Flying Dutchman

Picture generated with AI
Location: The Atlantic Ocean
Dates Active: 1700s to Present
Category: Curses, Demons, Ghost Ship, Omens
Cause: Unknown; Deal with the Devil
Status: Ongoing
Entry ID: 012824F-00050

Summery: 

A legendary ghost ship that was said to be doomed to sail the oceans forever, and was a warning for any sailors spotted her that they were headed for disaster.

In Depth:

The first written account of the legend of the Flying Dutchman was printed in 1790, which implied that the story was common amongst sailors of the time. Other versions of the story soon cropped up, but from them the main points of the story began to emerge:

The Flying Dutchman was a ship that could not, for whatever reason, make it to port and cursed to remain at sea forever. It would appear to other ships in bouts of foul weather, and those that saw should take it as a bad omen. Additional flourishes appeared over time, such as ships that would come across the boat and wanted to make contact with it were often greeted by a crew that would eagerly attempt to give them messages for those on land, only to find out later that the intended recipients had passed away long ago.

The reason for the Dutchman's curse can be because of one of two reasons, depending on who's telling the tale. The version is that the ship comes across a terrible storm while trying to make it around the Cape of Good Hope. The captain's pledges that he would successfully make it through the storm even if he had to sail until Judgment Day, to which the Devil himself take him up on it, cursing the captain and his crew to sail it forever.

The second version of the story involves the captain getting into a game of dice against the Devil for his soul. Losing the game costs him dearly, and he is unable to sale his ship to land. In both versions of the story the Devil himself is a prominent figure in the ship's fate, and all wind up with a similarly doomed crew.

In many popularized versions of the story, the captain and crew are able to make landfall once every few years (seven years in some versions, ten in others), in order for the captain to look or his true love. However, it seems that this particular story idea was added as some poetic license by poet Heinrich Heine, and was later used by Richard Wagner in his opera based on the Flying Dutchman legend.

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Last Updated: March 23, 2024

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