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The Flying Dutchman is a legendary ghost ship from folklore, said to be doomed to sail the oceans forever. The tale has captured imaginations for centuries and inspired numerous works of art, literature, and music, making it one of the most famous maritime legends in Western culture.
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Encyclopedic overview
The Flying Dutchman (Dutch: De Vliegende Hollander) is a legendary ghost ship, allegedly never able to make port and doomed to sail the sea forever. The myths and ghost stories are likely to have originated from the 17th-century Golden Age of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) and of Dutch maritime power. The oldest known extant version of the legend dates from the late 18th century. According to the legend, if hailed by another ship, the crew of the Flying Dutchman might try to send messages to land, or to people long dead. Reported sightings in the 19th and 20th centuries claimed that the ship glowed with a ghostly light. In ocean lore, the sight of this phantom ship functions as a portent of doom. It was commonly believed that the Flying Dutchman was a 17th-century cargo vessel known as a fluyt.
Origins
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Flying Dutchman” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.