The Dutch merchant fleet in 1683, Table Bay

In European maritime legend, the Flying Dutchman is a spectre (ghost) ship doomed to sail forever. The appearance to sailors is believed to signal imminent disaster as part of ocean lore; the sight of this phantom ship is a portent of doom.

REPORTED SIGHTINGS

There have been many reported or alleged sightings in the 19th and 20th centuries. A well-known sighting was by Prince George of Wales, the future King George V. He was on a three-year voyage during his late adolescence in 1880 with his elder brother Prince Albert Victor of Wales and their tutor John Neill Dalton. They temporarily shipped into HMS Inconstant after the damaged rudder was repaired in their original ship, the 400-tonne corvette Bacchante. The princes' log (indeterminate as to which prince, due to later editing before publication) records the following for the pre-dawn hours of 11 July 1881, off the coast of Australia in the Bass Strait between Melbourne and Sydney:

"July 11th. At 4 a.m. the Flying Dutchman crossed our bows. A strange red light as of a phantom ship all aglow, in the midst of which light the masts, spars and sails of a brig 200 yards distant stood out in strong relief as she came up on the port bow, where also the officer of the watch from the bridge clearly saw her, as did the quarterdeck midshipman, who was sent forward at once to the forecastle; but on arriving there was no vestige nor any sign whatever of any material ship was to be seen either near or right away to the horizon, the night being clear and the sea calm. Thirteen persons altogether saw her ... At 10.45 a.m. the ordinary seaman who had this morning reported the Flying Dutchman, fell from the foretopmast crosstrees on to the topgallant forecastle and was smashed to atoms."

ORIGIN OF THE LEGEND

The Flying Dutchman (De Vliegende Hollander) is a legendary ghost ship which was said to never be able to make port, doomed to sail the oceans forever. The myth is likely to have originated from the 17th-century Golden Age of the Dutch East India Company and Dutch maritime power. The oldest extant version of the legend has been dated to the late 18th century. According to the legend, if hailed by another ship, the crew of the Flying Dutchman was said to try to send messages to land, or to people long dead. Purported sightings in the 19th and 20th centuries claimed that the ship glowed with a ghostly light.

VERSIONS

In the most common version, the captain, Vanderdecken, gambles his salvation on a rash pledge to round the Cape of Good Hope during a storm and so is condemned to that course for eternity; it is this rendering which forms the basis of the opera Der fliegende Holländer (1843) by the German composer Richard Wagner.

Another legend depicts a Captain Falkenberg sailing forever through the North Sea, playing at dice for his soul with the devil. The dice-game motif recurs in the Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798) by the English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge; the mariner sights a phantom ship on which Death and Life in Death play dice to win him. The Scottish writer Sir Walter Scott adapted the legend in his narrative poem Rokeby (1813); murder is committed on shipboard, and plague breaks out among the crew, closing all ports to the ship.

FATA MORGANA, MIRAGE

One of the possible explanations of the origin of the Flying Dutchman legend is a Fata Morgana mirage seen at sea.

A nineteenth-century book illustration, showing enlarged superior mirages; mirages can never be so far above the horizon, and a superior mirage can never increase the length of an object as shown on the right

A Fata Morgana superior mirage of a ship can take many different forms. Even when the boat in the mirage does not seem to be suspended in the air, it still looks ghostly, and unusual, and what is even more important, it is ever-changing in its appearance. Sometimes a Fata Morgana causes a ship to appear to float inside the waves, at other times an inverted ship appears to sail above its real companion.

In fact, with a Fata Morgana it can be hard to say which individual segment of the mirage is real and which is not real: when a real ship is out of sight because it is below the horizon line, a Fata Morgana can cause the image of it to be elevated, and then everything which is seen by the observer is a mirage. On the other hand, if the real ship is still above the horizon, the image of it can be duplicated many times and elaborately distorted by a Fata Morgana. 

PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN 

The key players of the Pirates of the Caribbean film series are Johhny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow,  Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightley) and Geoffrey Rush as Captain Hector Barbossa, with Orlando Bloom as Will Turner.

The Pirates of the Caribbean stories follow the adventures of Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp), Will Turner (Orlando Bloom) and Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightley) on a quest for treasure, the fountain of youth with Joshamee Gibbs (Kevin McNally), and restitution from various curses relating to gold and silver coins, all the while evading the British Royal Navy, and Commodore James Norrington (Jack Davenport), featuring Blackbeard (Ian McShane) and Angelica (Penélope Cruz), ending with Carina Smyth (daughter of Hector Barbossa, Kaya Scodelario) and Henry Turner (son of Will and Elizabeth, Brenton Thwaites) taking a shine to each other against (Javier Bardem) Armando Salazar, who is seeking revenge.

Pirates of the Caribbean was produced by Jerry Bruckheimer with directors Gore Verbinski, Rob Marshall, Joachim Rønning, and Espen Sandberg. The series was primarily written by Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio.

Kiera Knightly as Miss Elizabeth Swann in an absolutely stunning outfit

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