The Flying Dutchman
legends of Aarne-Thompson-Uther type 777*
edited by
D. L. Ashliman
© 2013-2021
legends of Aarne-Thompson-Uther type 777*
edited by
D. L. Ashliman
© 2013-2021
|
Seamen implicitly believe in omens, mermaids, the Flying Dutchman, evil spirits, the appearance of the ghosts of the departed, and the pranks of malicious spirits and goblins -- Naval Sketch-Book (1826), p. 106. |
Nothing could do away the idea of this phenomenon on the minds of the sailors; and, on their relating the circumstances when they arrived in port, the story spread like wildfire, and the supposed phantom was called the Flying Dutchman. From the Dutch the English seamen got the infatuation, and there are very few Indiamen, but what has someone on board, who pretends to have seen the apparition.
About two in the morning I was waked by a violent shake by the shoulder, when, starting up in my hammock, I saw the boatswain, with evident signs of terror and dismay in his countenance, standing by me.
"For God's sake, messmate," said he, "hand us the key of the case, for by the Lord I'm damnably scarified; for, d'ye see, I was just looking over the weather bow, what should I see but the Flying Dutchman coming right down upon us, with everything set -- I know 'twas she -- I cou'd see all her lower-deck ports up, and the lights fore and aft, as if cleared for action. Now as how, d'ye see, I am sure no mortal ship could bear her lower-deck ports up and pot founder in this here weather. Why, the sea runs mountains high. It must certainly be the ghost of that there Dutchman, that foundered in this latitude, and which, I have heard say, always appears in this here quarter, in hard gales of wind."
After taking a good pull or two at the Holland's [a bottle], he grew a little composed, when I jokingly asked him if he was afraid of ghosts?
"Why, as to that, d'ye see," said he, "I think as how I'm as good as another man; but I'd always a terrible antipathy to those things. Even when I was a boy, I never could find it in my heart to cross a churchyard in the dark without whistling and hallooing, to make them believe I had company with me, for I've heard say they appear but to one at a time; for now, when I called to Joe Jackson, who was at the helm, to look over the weather bow, he saw nothing; tho', ask how, I saw it as plain as this here bottle," taking another swig at the Geneva.
Having some curiosity to see if I could make out anything that could take such an appearance, I turned out, and accompanied him upon deck; but it had cleared up, the moon shining very bright, and not a cloud to be seen; though, by what I could learn from the rest of the people who were on deck, it had been very cloudy about half an hour before, of course I easily divined what kind of phantom had so alarmed my messmate.
See you, beneath yon cloud so dark,
Fast gliding along, a gloomy bark?
Her sails are full, though the wind is still,
And there blows not a breath her sails to fill!Oh! what doth that vessel of darkness bear?
The silent calm of the grave is there,
Save now and again a death-knell rung,
And the flap of the sails, with night-fog hung!There lieth a wreck on the dismal shore
Of cold and pitiless Labrador;
Where, under the moon, upon mounts of frost,
Full many a mariner's bones are tost!Yon shadowy bark hath been to that wreck,
And the dim blue fire, that lights her deck,
Doth play on as pale and livid a crew,
As ever yet drank the church-yard dew!To Dead-Man's Isle, in the eye of the blast,
To Dead-Man's Isle, she speeds her fast;
By skeleton shapes her sails are furl'd,
And the hand that steers is not of this world!Oh! hurry thee on -- oh! hurry thee on,
Thou terrible bark! ere the night be gone,
Nor let morning look on so foul a sight
As would blanch for ever her rosy light!
The cause of her wandering is not altogether certain; but the general account is, that she was originally a vessel loaded with great wealth, on board of which some horrid act of murder and piracy had been committed; that the plague broke out among the wicked crew who had perpetrated the crime, and that they sailed in vain from port to port, offering, as the price of shelter, the whole of their ill-gotten wealth; that they were excluded from every harbour, for fear of the contagion which was devouring them, and that, as a punishment of their crimes, the apparition of the ship still continues to haunt those seas in which the catastrophe took place, and is considered by the mariners as the worst of all possible omens.
At two p.m. we had a squall, accompanied by thunder and rain. The seamen, growing restless, looked anxiously ahead. They said we would have a dirty night of it, and that it would not be worth while to turn into their hammocks. As the second mate was describing a gale he had encountered off Cape Race, Newfoundland, we were suddenly taken all aback, and the blast came upon us furiously. We continued to scud under a double reefed mainsail and foretopsail till dusk; but, as the sea ran high, the captain thought it safest to bring her to. The watch on deck consisted of four men, one of whom was appointed to keep a lookout ahead, for the weather was so hazy, that we could not see two cables' length from the bows. This man, whose name was Tom Willis, went frequently to the bows, as if to observe something; and when the others called to him, inquiring what he was looking at, he would give no definite answer. They therefore went also to the bows, and appeared startled, and at first said nothing.
But presently one of them cried, "William, go call the watch."
The seamen, having been asleep in their hammocks, murmured at this unseasonable summons, and called to know how it looked upon deck. To which Tom Willis replied, "Come up and see. What we are minding is not on deck, but ahead."
On hearing this, they ran up without putting on their jackets, and when they came to the bows there was a whispering.
One of them asked, "Where is she? I do not see her."
To which another replied, "The last flash of lightning showed there was not a reef in one of her sails; but we, who know her history, know that all her canvass will never carry her into port."
By this time, the talking of the seamen had brought some of the passengers on deck. They could see nothing, however, for the ship was surrounded by thick darkness, and by the noise of the dashing waters, and the seamen evaded the questions that were put to them.
At this juncture the chaplain came on deck. He was a man of grave and modest demeanor, and was much liked among the seamen, who called him Gentle George.
He overheard one of the men asking another, if he had ever seen the Flying Dutchman before, and if he knew the story about her. To which the other replied, "I have heard of her beating about in these seas. What is the reason she never reaches port?"
The first speaker replied, "They give different reasons for it, but my story is this: She was an Amsterdam vessel, and sailed from that port seventy years ago. Her master's name was Vanderdecken. He was a staunch seaman, and would have his own way, in spite of the devil. For all that, never a sailor under him had reason to complain; though how it is on board with them now, nobody knows. The story is this, that in doubling the Cape, they were a long day trying to weather the Table Bay, which we saw this morning. However, the wind headed them, and went against them more and more, and Vanderdecken walked the deck, swearing at the wind. Just after sunset, a vessel spoke him, asking if he did not mean to go into the Bay that night. Vanderdecken replied, 'May I be eternally d__d if I do, though I should beat about here till the day of judgment!' And to be sure, Vanderdecken never did go into that bay; for it is believed that he continues to beat about in these seas still, and will do so long enough. This vessel is never seen but with foul weather along with her."
To which another replied, "We must keep clear of her. They say that her captain mans his jolly boat, when a vessel comes in sight, and tries hard to get alongside, to put letters on board, but no good comes to them who have communication with him."
Tom Willis said, "There is such a sea between us at present, as should keep us safe from such visits."
To which the other answered, "We cannot trust to that, if Vanderdeckcn sends out his men."
Some of this conversation having been overheard by the passengers, there was a commotion among them. In the meantime, the noise of the waves against the vessel, could scarcely be distinguished from the sounds of the distant thunder. The wind had extinguished the light in the binnacle, where the compass was, and no one could tell which way the ship's head lay.
The passengers were afraid to ask questions, lest they should augment the secret sensation of fear which chilled every heart, or learn any more than they already knew. For while they attributed their agitation of mind to the state of the weather, it was sufficiently perceptible that their alarms also arose from a cause which they did not acknowledge.
The lamp at the binnacle being re-lighted, they perceived that the ship lay closer to the wind than she had hitherto done, and the spirits of the passengers were somewhat revived.
Nevertheless, neither the tempestuous state of the atmosphere, nor the thunder had ceased; and soon a vivid flash of lightning showed the waves tumbling around us, and, in the distance, the Flying Dutchman scudding furiously before the wind, under a press of canvass. The sight was but momentary , but it was sufficient to remove doubt from the minds of the passengers.
One of the men cried aloud, "There she goes, top-gallants and all."
The chaplain had brought up his prayer book, in order that he might draw from thence something to fortify and tranquillize the minds of the rest. Therefore, taking his seat near the binnacle, so that the light shone upon the white leaves of the book, he, in a solemn tone, read out the service for those distressed at sea. The sailors stood round with folded arms, and looked as if they thought it would be of little use. But this served to occupy the attention of those on deck for a while.
In the meantime, the flashes of lightning becoming less vivid, showed nothing else, far or near, but the billows weltering round the vessel. The sailors seemed to think that they had not yet seen the worst, but confined their remarks and prognostications to their own circle.
At this time, the captain, who had hitherto remained in his birth, came on deck, and, with a gay and unconcerned air, inquired what was the cause of the general dread. He said he thought they had already seen the worst of the weather, and wondered that his men had raised such a hubbub about a capful of wind. Mention being made of the Flying Dutchman, the captain laughed. He said he would like very much to see any vessel carrying top-gallant-sails in such a night, for it would be a sight worth looking at.
The chaplain, taking him by one of the buttons of his coat, drew him aside, and appeared to enter into serious conversation with him. While they were talking together the captain was heard to say, "Let us look to our own ship, and not mind such things," and accordingly, he sent a man aloft, to see if all was right about the foretop-sail yard, which was chafing the mast wit a loud noise.
It was Tom Willis who went up; and when he came down, he said that all was tight, and that he hoped it would soon get clearer; and that they would see no more of what they were most afraid of.
The captain and first mate were heard laughing loudly together, while the chaplain observed, that it would be better to repress such unseasonable gaiety. The second mate, a native of Scotland, whose name was Duncan Saunderson, having attended one of the university classes at Aberdeen, thought himself too wise to believe all that the sailors said, and took part with the captain. He jestingly told Tom Willis, to borrow his grandam's spectacles the next time he was sent to keep a lookout ahead.
Tom walked sulkily away, muttering, that he would nevertheless trust to his own eyes till morning, and accordingly took his station at the bow, and appeared to watch as attentively as before.
The sound of talking soon ceased, for many returned to their births, and we heard nothing but the clanking of the ropes upon the masts, and the bursting of the billows ahead, as the vessel successively took the seas.
But after a considerable interval of darkness, gleams of lightning began to reappear. Tom Willis suddenly called out, "Vanderdecken, again! Vanderdecken, again! I see, them letting down a boat."
All who were on deck ran to the bows. The next flash of lightning shone far and wide over the raging sea, and showed us not only the Flying Dutchman at a distance, but also a boat coming from her with four men. The boat was within two cables' length of our ship's side. The man who first saw her, ran to the captain, and asked whether they should hail her or not. The captain, walking about in great agitation, made no reply.
The first mate cried, "Who's going to heave a rope to that boat?"
The men looked at each other without offering to do anything. The boat had come very near the chains, when Tom Willis called out, "What do you want, or what devil has blown you here in such weather?"
A piercing voice from the boat replied in English, "We want to speak with your captain."
The captain took no notice of this, and Vanderdecken's boot having come close alongside, one of the men came upon deck, and appeared like a fatigued and weather-beaten seaman, holding some letters in his hand.
Our sailors all drew back. The chaplain, however, looking steadfastly upon him, went forward a few steps, and asked, "What is the purpose of this visit?"
The stranger replied, "We have long been kept here by foul weather, and Vanderdecken wishes to send these letters to his friends in Europe."
Our captain now came forward, and said as firmly as he could, "I wish Vanderdecken would put his letters on board of any other vessel rather than mine."
The stranger replied, "We have tried many a ship, but most of them refuse our letters."
Upon which, Tom Willis muttered, "It will be best for us if we do the same, for they say, there is sometimes a sinking weight in your paper."
The stranger took no notice of this, but asked where we were from. On being told that we were from Portsmouth, he said, as if with strong feeling, "Would that you had rather been from Amsterdam. Oh that we saw it again! -- We must see our friends again."
When he uttered these words, the men who were in the boat below, wrung their hands, and cried in a piercing tone, in Dutch, "Oh that we saw it again! We have been long here beating about; but we must see our friends again."
The chaplain asked the stranger, "How long have you been at sea?"
He replied, "We have lost our count; for our almanac was blown overboard. Our ship, you see, is there still; so why should you ask how long we have been at sea? for Vanderdecken only wishes to write home and comfort his friends."
To which the chaplain replied, "Your letters, I fear, would be of no use in Amsterdam, even if they were delivered, for the persons to whom they are addressed are probably no longer to be found there, except under very ancient green turf in the churchyard."
The unwelcome stranger then wrung his hands, and appeared to weep; and replied, "It is impossible. We cannot believe you. We have been long driving about here, but country nor relations cannot be so easily forgotten. There is not a raindrop in the air but feels itself kindred to all the rest, and they fall back into the sea to meet with each other again. How then, can kindred blood be made to forget where it came from? Even our bodies are part of the ground of Holland; and Vanderdecken says, if he once were come to Amsterdam, he would rather be changed into a stone post, well fixed into the ground, than leave it again; if that were to die elsewhere. But in the meantime, we only ask you to take these letters."
The chaplain, looking at him with astonishment, said, "This is the insanity of natural affection, which rebels against all measures of time and distance."
The stranger continued, "Here is a letter from our second mate, to his dear and only remaining friend, his uncle, the merchant who lives in the second house on Stuncken Yacht Quay."
He held forth the letter, but no one would approach to take it. Tom Willis raised his voice, and said, "One of our men here says that he was in Amsterdam last summer, and he knows for certain, that the street called Stuncken Yacht Quay, was pulled down sixty years ago, and now there is only a large church at that place."
The man from the Flying Dutchman, said, "It is impossible; we cannot believe you. Here is another letter from myself, in which I have sent a banknote to my dear sister, to buy some gallant lace, to make her a high headdress."
Tom Willis hearing this, said, "It is most likely that her head now lies under a tombstone, which will outlast all the changes of the fashion. But on what house is your banknote?"
The stranger replied, "On the house of Vanderbrucker and Company."
The man, of whom Tom Willis had spoken, said, "I guess there will now be some discount upon it, for that banking house was gone to destruction forty years ago; and Vanderbrucker was afterwards a-missing. -- But to remember these things is like raking up the bottom of an old canal."
The stranger called out passionately, "It is impossible. We cannot believe it! It is cruel to say such things to people in our condition. There is a letter from our captain himself, to his much-beloved and faithful wife, whom he left at a pleasant summer dwelling, on the border of the Haarlemer Mer. She promised to have the house beautifully painted and gilded before he came back, and to get a new set of looking-glasses for the principal chamber, that she might see as many images of Vanderdecken, as if she had six husbands at once."
The man replied, "There has been time enough for her to have had six husbands since then; but were she alive still, there is no fear that Vanderdecken would ever get home to disturb her."
On hearing this the stranger again shed tears, and said, if they would not take the letters, he would leave them; and looking around he offered the parcel to the captain, chaplain, and to the rest of the crew successively, but each drew back as it was offered, and put his hands behind his back. He then laid the letters upon the deck, and placed upon them a piece of iron, which was lying near, to prevent them from being blown away. Having done this, he swung himself over the gangway, and went into the boat.
We heard the others speak to him, but the rise of a sudden squall prevented us from distinguishing his reply. The boat was seen to quit the ship's side, and, in a few moments, there were no more traces of her than if she had never been there. The sailors rubbed their eyes, as if doubting what they had witnessed, but the parcel still lay upon deck, and proved the reality of all that had passed.
Duncan Saunderson, the Scotch mate, asked the captain if he should take them up, and put them in the letter bag. Receiving no reply, he would have lifted them if it had not been for Tom Willis, who pulled him back, saying that nobody should touch them.
In the meantime the captain went down to the cabin, and the chaplain having followed him, found him at his bottle-case, pouring out a large dram of brandy. The captain, although somewhat disconcerted, immediately offered the glass to him, saying, "Here, Charters, is what is good in a cold night."
The chaplain declined drinking anything, and the captain having swallowed the bumper, they both returned to the deck, where they found the seamen giving their opinions concerning what should be done with the letters. Tom Willis proposed to pick them up on a harpoon and throw it overboard.
Another speaker said, "I have always heard it asserted that it is neither safe to accept them voluntarily, nor when they are left to throw them out of the ship."
"Let no one touch them," said the carpenter. "The way to do with the letters from the Flying Dutchman is to case them upon deck, by nailing boards over them, so that if he sends back for them, they are still there to give him."
The carpenter went to fetch his tools. During his absence, the ship gave so violent a pitch, that the piece of iron slid off the letters, and they were whirled overboard by the wind, like birds of evil omen whirring through the air. There was a cry of joy among the sailors, and they ascribed the favorable change which soon took place in the weather, to our having got quit of Vanderdecken. We soon got underway again. The night watch being set, the rest of the crew retired to their births.
The supposed origin of the "Flying Dutchman" is that a vessel from Batavia was on the point of entering Table Bay in stress of weather during the Dutch occupation os the Cape, when in the winter season, no vessel was allowed to enter the bay: the batteries fired on the distressed ship, and compelled it to put to sea, where it was lost, and as the sailors say has continued ever since beating about, and will continue to do so till the day of judgment.
The "Dutchman" is said to appear generally to ships in a heavy gale, with all sail set -- and when the eastern navigator is in a calm, the Dutchman appears to be scudding under bare poles. As many persons think such an apparition the creation of fancy, I give the following statement which was noted down in the logbook of his Majesty's ship Leven, when employed with the Barracouta, &c, in surveying East Africa, and in the dangers and disaster of which squadron I participated.
His Majesty's ship Leven, Capt. W. F. W. Owen, on the 6th April, 1823, when off Point Danger, on her voyage from Algoa to Simon's Bay, saw her consort the Barracouta about two miles to leeward; this was considered extraordinary as her sailing orders would have placed her in a different direction; but her peculiar rig left no doubt as to her identity, and at last many well known faces were distinctly visible looking towards the Leven.
Capt. Owen attempted to close with her to speak, but was surprised that she not only made no effort to join the Leven, on the contrary stood away: being near the destined port, Capt. Owen did not follow her, and continued on his course to the Cape, but at sunset she was observed to heave to and lower a boat, apparently for the purpose of picking up a man overboard; during the night there was no light nor any symptoms of her locality.
The next morning, the Leven anchored in Simon's Bay where for a whole week the Barracouta was anxiously expected. On her arrival (the 14th) it was seen by her log, that she was 300 miles from the Leven, when the latter thought she saw her, and had not lowered any boat that evening; it should also be remarked that no other vessel of the same class was ever seen about the Cape.
On another occasion a similar phenomenon was witnessed by the Leven, and a boat was apparently lowered as is generally the case when the phantom seeks to lure his victim. The veteran sailor was not however, to be caught,* and the Leven after many perils, reached England in safety.
*It is said that any vessel which the "Dutchman" can get his letters on board of is certain to be lost.
Thrice as a passenger in a merchant ship, I saw a vessel in nearly similar circumstances: on one occasion we hoisted lights over the gang-way to speak with the stranger; the third time was my recent return from India. We had been in "dirty weather," as the sailors say, for several days, and to beguile the afternoon I commenced after dinner narrating to the French officers and passengers (who were strangers to the Eastern seas), the stories current about the "Flying Dutchman."
The wind, which had been freshening during the evening, now blew a stiff gale, and we proceeded on deck to see the crew make our bark all snug for the night. The clouds, dark and heavy, coursed with rapidity across the moon, whose lustre is peculiar in the S. hemisphere, and we could see a distance of from eight to ten miles on the horizon.
Suddenly the second officer, a fine Marseilles sailor, who had been among the foremost in the cabin in laughing at and ridiculing the story of the "Flying Dutchman," ascended the weather rigging, exclaiming, "Voila le volant Hollandais!"
The captain sent for his night glass, and soon observed, "It is very strange, but there is a ship bearing down upon us with all sail set, while we dare scarcely show a pocket-handkerchief to the breeze."
In a few minutes the stranger was visible to all on deck; her rig plainly discernible, and people on her poop; she seemed to near us with the rapidity of lightning, and apparently wished to pass under our quarter, as if for the purpose of speaking.
The captain, a resolute Bordeaux mariner, said it was quite incomprehensible, and sent for the trumpet to hail or answer, when in an instant, and while we were all standing on the qui vive, the stranger totally disappeared, and was no more seen.
I give this, coupled with Capt. Owen's statement as regards H. M. S. Leven, without remark, and, but that it would seem frivolous, could relate several other instances. The reader will, I hope, excuse this digression, which could not well be avoided in treating of the Cape of Good Hope, whose name is almost associated with that of the "Flying Dutchman."
li>This account was reprinted in: Army and Navy Chronicle, vol. 3, no. 26 (Washington: December 29, 1836), p. 406.
That wooden ghost, that spook-ship, is so called from the captain, a Dutchman, who once swore by all the devils that he would get round a certain mountain -- its name has escaped me -- in spite of a fearful storm, even if he would have to sail until Judgment Day.
The devil took him at his word, therefore he must sail forever, until set free by a woman's loyalty. The devil, in his stupidity, has no faith in female loyalty, and allowed the enchanted captain to land once in seven years and get married, and thus find opportunities to save his soul.
The poor Dutchman! He often has been only too glad to escape from his marriage and his wife-savior, and get on board again.
The play which I saw in Amsterdam [in the year 1827] was based on this fable. Another seven years have passed; the poor Dutchman is more weary than ever of his endless wandering; he comes ashore, befriends a Scottish nobleman, to whom he sells diamonds at an unbelievably low price, and when he hears that his customer has a beautiful daughter, he asks for her hand in marriage. This bargain is agreed to as well.
Next we see the Scotsman's home; with an anxious heart the maiden awaits the bridegroom. With melancholy she often looks up at a large, time-worn picture which hangs in the hall, and depicts a handsome man in Spanish-Dutch clothing. It is an old heirloom, and according to her grandmother, it is a true portrait of the Flying Dutchman as he was seen in Scotland a hundred years earlier, in the time of William of Orange. A warning connected to this portrait has been passed down as well: that the women of the family must beware of the person depicted in the painting.
This warning has naturally enough had the result of deeply impressing the features of the dangerous man in the picture in the girl's mind, from her childhood onward. Therefore, when the authentic Flying Dutchman makes his appearance, she is startled, but not from fear.
He too is moved when he sees the portrait. But when he is told who it represents, he tactfully turns aside all suspicion, makes fun of the superstition, and ridicules the Flying Dutchman, the Wandering Jew of the Ocean.
Nevertheless, now in a melancholy mood, he relates how the gentleman must be suffering horribly out there on the endless waves, how his body is nothing other than a coffin of flesh in which is soul in imprisoned, how life and death alike reject him, like an empty cask scornfully cast ashore by the sea, then contemptuously again set adrift. He further muses that the poor Dutchman's agony must be as deep as the sea on which he sails -- cast between life and death, his ship without anchor, and his heart without hope.
I believe that these were, more or less, the words with which the bridegroom ends. The bride looks at him earnestly, now and then casting glances at his portrait.
It seems seems that she has guessed his secret; and when he afterwards asks, "Katherine, will you be true to me?" she answers with resolve, "True to death."
She cries aloud, "I was true to you to this hour, and I know how to be true unto death!
Saying this she throws herself into the waves, and the enchantment is ended. The Flying Dutchman is redeemed, and we see the ghostly ship slowly sink into the depths of the sea.
Some might have supposed that a boat was rowed along unseen under the deep shadows of the opposite shores; but the ancient traditionists of the neighborhood knew better. Some said it was one of the whale-boats of the old Water Guard, sunk by the British ships during the war, but now permitted to haunt its old cruising-grounds; but the prevalent opinion connected it with the awful fate of Rambout van Dam of graceless memory.
He was a roistering Dutchman of Spiting Devil, who in times long past had navigated his boat alone one Saturday the whole length of the Tappan Sea, to attend a quilting frolic at Kakiat, on the western shore. Here he had danced and drunk until midnight, when he entered his boat to return home. He was warned that he was on the verge of Sunday morning; but he pulled off nevertheless, swearing he would not land until he reached Spiting Devil, if it took him a month of Sundays.
He was never seen afterwards; but may be heard plying his oars, as above mentioned, -- being the Flying Dutchman of the Tappan Sea, doomed to ply between Kakiat and Spiting Devil until the day of judgment.
His ship was so large that on her deck there was a garden of fruits and flowers, besides sheep, and milch kine, and provisions of all sorts. He was ignorant of the navigation of the Dernoch Firth, but he tried to enter it, in the hopes of some northwest passage. He ran his ship on the quicksands of the Gizzen Brigs, and there where she sank the fisherman can still see her topgallant, and her bargee, flying and fluttering in the waves.
Her crew and her captain must be still alive, for in calm weather they may be heard praying and singing psalms to avert the judgment of the Last Day, when the master of the Rotterdam will be punished.
This recalls the account of Vanderdecken's attempt to double the Cape, and the legend of the "Flying Dutchman."
That place is Raftra, where they say St. Leven Church was to have been built; but as fast as the stones were taken there by day, they were removed by night to the place of the present church. (These performances are usually the act of the devil, but I have no information as to the saint or sinner who did this work.) Raftra House, at the time it was built, was the largest mansion west of Penzance. It is said to have been erected by the Tresillians, and, ere it was finished, they appear to have been obliged to sell house and lands for less than it had cost them to build the house.
This valley is in every respect a melancholy spot, and during a period of storms, or at night, it is exactly the place which might well be haunted by demon revellers. In the days of the saint from whom the parish has its name -- St. Leven -- he lived a long way up from the cove, at a place called Bodelan, and his influence made that, which is now so dreary, a garden. By his pure holiness he made the wilderness a garden of flowers, and spread gladness where now is desolation.
Few persons cared to cross that valley after nightfall; and it is not more than thirty years since that I had a narrative from an inhabitant of Penberth, that he himself had seen the spectre ship sailing over the land.
This strange apparition is said to have been observed frequently, coming in from sea about nightfall, when the mists were rising from the marshy ground in the Bottoms.
Onward came the ill-omened craft. It passed steadily through the breakers on the shore, glided up over the sands, and steadily pursued its course over the dry land, as if it had been water. She is described to have been a black, square-rigged, single-masted affair, usually, but not always, followed by a boat. No crew was ever seen. It is supposed they were below, and that the hatches were battened down. On it went to Bodelan, where St. Leven formerly dwelt. It would then steer its course to Chygwiden, and there vanish like smoke.
Many of the old people have seen this ship, and no one ever saw it, upon whom some bad luck was not sure to fall. This ship is somehow connected with a strange man who returned from sea, and went to live at Chygwiden. It may be five hundred years since -- it may be but fifty.
He was accompanied by a servant of foreign and forbidding aspect, who continued to be his only attendant; and this servant was never known to speak to any one save his master. It is said by some they were pirates; others make them more familiar, by calling them privateers; while some insist upon it they were American bucaneers.
Whatever they may have been, there was but little seen of them by any of their neighbours. They kept a boat at Porthcurno Cove, and at daylight they would start for sea, never returning until night, and not unfrequently remaining out the whole of the night, especially if the weather was tempestuous. This kind of sea-life was varied by hunting. It mattered not to them whether it was day or night; when the storm was loudest, there was this strange man, accompanied either by his servant or by the devil, and the midnight cry of his dogs would disturb the country.
This mysterious being died, and then the servant sought the aid of a few of the peasantry to bear his coffin to the churchyard. The corpse was laid in the grave, around which the dogs were gathered, with the foreigner in their midst. As soon as the earth was thrown on the coffin, man and dogs disappeared, and, strange to say, the boat disappeared at the same moment from the cove. It has never since been seen; and from that day to this no one has been able to keep a boat in Porthcurno Cove.
The story is told with variations by the sailors of every land, but a striking similarity exists in the main point of all the legends, -- in each the vessel is condemned to wander forever on account of a great crime committed by the captain.
The commonly accepted version of the story is that given by [Augustin] Jal:
An unbelieving Dutch captain, endeavoring to double Cape Horn against the force of a head wind, profanely swore that he would persist in his course in spite of the decrees of Providence. Undeterred by the remonstrances of his crew, he laughed at their fears, made some of them, who threatened mutiny, walk the plank from the deck into the sea, and flogged others at the mast. Cries from suffering victims rose to heaven, and holy spirits swooped down before him and made merciful appeals to the enraged wretch, but at some he threw dishwater, at others he fired a pistol, and finally a voice from above proclaimed that on account of his blasphemy he should be condemned forever to sail the sea, the evil genius of sailors.
Thus the appearance of the Flying Dutchman is ever dreaded as the forerunner of disaster.
O'Reilly sings:
Heaven help the ship near which the demon sailor steers,
The doom of those is fixed to whom the Phantom Ship appears;
They'll never reach their destined port, they'll see their homes no more;
They who see the Flying Dutchman never, never reach the shore.
The Phantom Ship is never seen twice under the same circumstances. By one she is beheld in the midst of the storm, with all sails set, placidly plowing her way through the wildest billows; by another, she is beheld on a calm night, with sails closely reefed, pitching and tumbling as though in a terrible storm.
All the main features of the legend are detailed by [Frederick] Marryatt in his story of The Phantom Ship. In this remarkable sea-tale the incidents are told by her captain, who narrates his adventures from the time when, on account of impiety, he was condemned to wander, until, by the restoration of a relic, his aimless voyages came to an end. The dramatic feature of the tale lies in the fact that the captain's son undertakes his redemption, and filled with a filial purpose follows the Phantom Ship to and fro over the watery waste.
He sees her first in a cloud, just at sunset, and his ship approaches so close to the spirit vessel that the whistles of the boatswain, the orders given on the decks, the rattling of the cordage are plainly heard.
Again he beholds her in a good breeze, her hull enveloped in mist. A gun is fired from her bow; voices are heard and the trampling of the crew as they man the ropes, and she passes out of sight.
Again he sees her as she decoys other vessels into dangerous waters, herself passing over the reef without altering her course, and at last she rises slowly out of the water, a demon ship, and awaits the coming of the boat sent by her pursuers.
But even this mighty craft was a toy boat compared to the Chasse Foudre, "The Lightning Chaser," of old French mariners, which was so large that seven years were required to tack or change her course; when she rolled, whales were stranded on the shore; thirty thousand men were thirty years in digging the iron to make her hull. Her cables were as thick as the diameter of St. Peter's dome and so long that they could seven times encircle the globe; her lower masts were so tall that a boy grew white-headed before reaching the first yard; her smallest sail was larger than all Europe; twenty-five thousand soldiers could maneuvre on the cap which covered the top of the main-mast; in her forecastle was a garden larger than the whole of France; in every block of the rigging there was a tavern; every quid of tobacco used by one of her sailors would supply a frigate's crew for three years; a dram of grog was composed of seventeen hogsheads of rum, to say nothing of the water.
These were stories of the olden times, when the Phantom Ship was in her prime; but within the last three centuries she gradually diminished in size, until sixty years ago she was no larger than an ordinary vessel. She still remained, however, a place of punishment for wicked sailors, and some who beheld her saw death-heads grinning from her ports, a skeleton captain walking her bridge, the corpse of a seaman on the lookout, and a ghost taking his trick at the wheel.
She is sometimes inhabited by demons, who chastise the spirits of evil seamen with whips of scorpions; dogs are set to guard the prisoners and inflict ten thousand tortures on the hapless wretches; in her forecastle, cabin and hold, serpents, cats, hobgoblins, creeping things, all kinds of horrors abound.
They were, however, sometimes visited even by the living. St. Brandan, an Irish monk, started to explore them in a phantom boat, and after sailing twenty-four days and nights, came to an island of fiends and volcanoes, where whole fleets of phantom ships were at anchor in the harbor, and spectral sailors wandering to and fro on the shore. Such a spectacle as a monk had never before been seen on the island. He was attacked by the demons, and was only saved by the intercession of a saint more powerful than himself, who conducted him through the island, showed him all the torments in progress, and gave him material for a narrative closely resembling the story of Dante.
Leaving this horrid island, after twentyfour days and nights he arrived at the Islands of the Blessed, which were filled with delights of every kind. No night was there, nor heat of the sun; pleasant prospects charmed the eye; soft music from unseen sources fascinated the ear; every flower was fragrant, every taste a pleasure. In this paradisaical place the good monk probably spent the remainder of his days, for we do not hear more of his adventures.
During Owen's travels he visited Port Danger, of the South Africa coast, and there he and all with him beheld in the offing the British man-of-war Barracouta. So plainly visible was the vessel that she was recognized by all on shore; even the figures on her deck were plainly to be seen. Some days after she arrived, when it was proven that she was three hundred miles away at the time her spectral counterpart sailed into the harbor and vanished.
At Oporto, Lisbon, Marseilles, and other ports of Southern Europe, the phantoms of vessels are often seen during the summer season a day or two before their arrival; in the North Sea, the spectre of a ship upside down is a certain forerunner of bad weather. The Fata Morgana, a daily phenomenon in the Straits of Messina, shows the phantoms of vessels in all sorts of positions and with all kinds of distortion. Sometimes the ship is in the air; sometimes a double reflection is presented in the water; occasionally there are three images of the same vessel, two in the water and one in the air.
The tropical seas are full of optical wonders. The Arctic Region abounds with reflected images; of icebergs, of mountains, of continents, of vessels. All these things have become familiar to the modern scientist, and for all a natural explanation has been found.
The Flying Dutchman is not an optical delusion, but an optical reality, so the old sailor was right in one particular, the basis of the story; and, given a starting point, the rest was easy. A derelict bark, seen under circumstances of danger, perhaps gave rise to the supernatural appearance of the phantom; a vessel whose crew were all dead of the plague -- a slaver laden with fetid corpses -- gave the idea of the wandering ship haunted by the souls of the dead. The presence of electrical lights at the mast-heads, the brilliancy of the Aurora Borealis, the appearance of peculiar mists, the resonance of the air at certain times, did the rest and embellished the tale with all its fanciful and grotesquely horrible additions.
It is even asserted that the Flying Dutchman was a real person, by name Bernard Fokke, of the seventeenth century. He was a reckless, daring seaman who, that he might carry the more sail in a high wind, cased his masts with iron. One voyage to India he made in ninety days, then an unprecedented rate of speed, and so rapidly did he traverse the water-world that even in his own time he was be lieved to be in league with Satan. But Bernard took one risk too many, and setting sail from Amsterdam with the expressed determination to beat his own record to India, was never afterwards heard of, and of course Satan took him and the ship and set them to travelling up and down the world to the be wilderment of better men.
The old sailor himself will soon be as rare as his spectres, for with improved navigation come increased confidence and decreased credulity. The sailor no longer feels his way across the sea, but calculates exactly where he is, knows how far he has travelled, how far he has still to go. Every rock in the ocean is laid down on the maps, and the seaman knows exactly what course to take to secure the safety of his vessel. He has confidence in his ship, and in his ship's captain; the voyages of the present day are short in comparison to those of former years; appliances for the sailor's safety are more efficient than ever before; the hiss of escaping steam, the crashing of the propellers are a wonderful relief from the dead silence which once reigned over the deep.
The sailor knows that on every headland in civilized countries around the globe a lamp blazes, warning him of danger; he hears the steam siren singing from every light-ship, but her voice is significant of peril, not an enticement to destruction. Fear, on eagle pinions, follows banished danger, and with whistle sounding and lights flashing from foretop and sides, with captain and first officer on the bridge, with second and third officers pacing the deck, with double lookout at the bow, the sailor plunges into the fog, forgetful of his phantoms.
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Revised February 22, 2021.