Flying Dutchman

A name applied to the traditional spectre-ship which has been met with, according to the claims of many seamen, to the eastward of the Cape of Good Hope. The legend runs that in the year A. D. 1652 one Cornelius Vanderdecken, a Holland shipmaster, sailed from Amsterdam for Batavia in command of a Holland ship called the Braave. The vessel reached Batavia, discharged her cargo, loaded, and sailed for Amsterdam; but, after meeting with a succession of westerly gales which prevented the vessel not only from getting around the Cape of Good Hope, but drove her away to the eastward, Captain Vanderdecken, while in a passion over the delay, defied heaven, and, shaking his clenched fist at the skies, swore that he would double the Cape in spite of God Himself. From that day the phantom ship has been struggling to weather the Cape of Good Hope, but the mark of blasphemy against the Most High is on the vessel, and she is doomed, with her Dutch skipper and crew, to sail hopelessly on forever, sometimes reaching, but never passing, the meridian which calls for them a halt, before they are again driven back into the solitude of the Southern Ocean. Under that great span in the heavens, reaching from pole to pole, they can never sail, for the Almighty has hung upon it in letters of righteous wrath: "Thus far shalt thou go and no farther." Seamen believe that to sight this vessel will bring them gales, shipwreck, and death. It is to be remarked that although at one time it was occasionally seen, the Flying Dutchman has not been reported now in some years.