Flying Dutchman

Flying Dutchman, a Dutch captain, Van Straaten, who was condemned, as a penalty for his sins, to sweep the seas around the Cape of Storms (the Cape of Good Hope) unceasingly, without ever being able to reach a haven. Seamen who saw his black spectral ship on the horizon quickly changed their course, and hastened to flee from his fatal influence. The notion that gave foundation to this legend is widespread in German mythology. The dead crossed the water in boats, and northern heroes were sometimes buried on land within their ships, sometimes placed in a ship which was taken out to sea and allowed to drift with the waves; while the same story is localised in the German Ocean, where Herr von Falkenberg is condemned to beat about the ocean until the day of judgment, on board a ship without helm or steersman, playing at dice with the devil for his soul. In the form of the legend chiefly current in England, the impious seaman's name is Vanderdecken, while his ship, which continually scours the seas, is, in all respects but reality, the image of a real ship. The legend gave Wagner the subject for his well-known opera, Der fliegende Holländer.