The Curse of the Flying Dutchman - Ep. 21

What happens when a cursed ghost ship becomes both victim and warning?

In this episode of Cursed...ish, Daniel and Angela set sail into the foggy, storm-tossed legend of the Flying Dutchman, the doomed ship said to be cursed to sail the oceans forever, never reaching port and never finding peace. From eerie sightings by British sailors and royal witnesses to centuries of maritime folklore around the Cape of Good Hope, this episode explores why the Flying Dutchman became one of the most famous ghost ship legends in the world.

Along the way, we dig into Dutch sea power, the dangerous trade routes of the Dutch East India Company, Captain Hendrik van der Decken, cursed letters from the dead, and the strange idea that simply seeing the Flying Dutchman could bring disaster. Then we look beneath the surface at possible real-world explanations, including St. Elmo’s fire, Fata Morgana mirages, stormy seas, sailor superstition, and the very human need to turn fear, loss, and uncertainty into a story.

Was the Flying Dutchman a cursed ship doomed by hubris, a ghostly omen of death, or just a terrifying trick of light on the open ocean?

Maybe cursed. Maybe not.

Questions, comments, or your own accursed tales to share? Send us a hex at uhoh@cursedish.com.

The hosts of Cursed...ish are not responsible for any misfortunes that may befall you while listening to this podcast. By listening to Cursed...ish, you assume all risk of bad luck, ill omens, and unexplained catastrophes.

*Terms and conditions may be upheld by unknown forces.

Transcript

Daniel 0:00

These boats had no radio, no sanitation, no GPS, no weather forecasts.

SPEAKER_00 0:06

And it was like the stars!

Daniel 0:07

Look at the stars. I mean, the maps they had were just like hand-drawn. They were just like disappearing off the edges of hand-drawn maps at this time. It's like, what's over there? Let's find out. Welcome, accursed ones, to Cursed Ish, the podcast that charts a course through the foggy, uncharted waters of misfortune and mystery, and plums the depths of history, human storytelling, and whatever strange Wikipedia hole is necessary to uncover the full story beneath the surface. I'm Daniel Stevens.

Angela 0:45

And I'm Angela Mattis.

Daniel 0:47

So, Angela, right off the bat, I'm afraid to tell you this week I am here to collect a debt. Um remember when you stole a curse from my brainstorming list a few weeks back, and I swore revenge? Well, the time has come to reap what you have sown. I have stolen something from your I perused your brainstorming session, and I did steal something from your list. So I hope it's not worth it.

Angela 1:10

I had this coming.

Daniel 1:12

Yeah, you've is well deserved, I think. I hope it's one that you don't already know inside and out. Or if it is, at least it's one that I'm able to put, you know, my spin on enough to make it interesting for you. But today we're gonna talk about the Curse of the Flying Dutchman.

Angela 1:25

Oh, I'm just kidding. No, I'm excited because this was one that I didn't know a lot about and was like, ooh, interesting. And um, like I feel like my knowledge goes as far as the Curse of or the Pirates of the Caribbean, and I haven't seen that movie in at least probably since it was like coming out in theaters. So I'm I'm excited. I'm gonna look at this as thanks for uh doing the work for me, and I'm just gonna enjoy the show.

Daniel 1:54

That's that's honestly the one you you stole from my list, the curse of Macbeth, very similarly situated for me. I basically knew of the curse, and I know, of course, of Macbeth, but I didn't know any of the history. So I'm glad that I stole a sort of similar one for you, and uh, and you should just be able to learn about it rather than doing the research yourself.

Angela 2:12

What if we looked in our stats and like inexplicably like the Macbeth episode had like no listens or whatever, like no downloads, and this one didn't either, and we like cursed our own episodes by stealing them from each other with the happened.

Daniel 2:28

Yeah, yeah, you didn't your Macbeth episode was great, and uh, I guess we'll have to see how you feel that this one.

Angela 2:34

You've got a lot to live up to, pal.

Daniel 2:36

Well, I guess let's get into it to start. I figured I would kind of get an idea of where you're at with a very common fear of uh uh, you know, do you trust boats?

Angela 2:45

I've never thought about it.

Daniel 2:47

Okay, so it's not something that just inherently I've never been betrayed by a boat, that's the question.

Angela 2:52

I mean, have you ever been innocent until proven guilty?

Daniel 2:55

Have you been on many boat rides? Have you ever been on an ocean, a cruise on the ocean, for example?

Angela 3:01

No, Daniel, I've never been on a cruise.

Daniel 3:03

You've never been on a boat out on the ocean?

Angela 3:05

Have I experienced the motion of the ocean? Is that what you're asking me?

SPEAKER_03 3:09

No, Angela, get your head out of the gutter.

Angela 3:11

I'm getting us our explicit rating real quick today. Um no, I I'm one of those people who talks shit about cruises all the time but has never actually been on one, so I realize that I'm just being a little brat. But like they're very the idea of going on a cruise is very unappealing to me. Although I'm currently booked for a cruise next year.

Daniel 3:34

Where a Caribbean cruise or Alaska? Oh, oh, Alaskan cruises. I went on one once. It was amazing. It was, I mean, everyone.

Angela 3:43

I figure that's like the best way to tip a tone. But like, I'm sorry, like Hell on Earth to me is a like carnival cruise and like jam-packed with people and too much overstimulation and noise. And like every time I see somebody doing some sort of a TikTok or whatever, where they're like, This is my experience on you know, whatever big old cruise. You know what actually is honestly hell on earth to me is the thought of going on a Disney cruise, like children, yep, Disney trapped in the middle of the ocean. And lately, everyone's been just getting diseases on these things. Like, I'm in the right. I am in the right. I don't trust a boat.

Daniel 4:21

Yeah, okay. And and there's like planes. Yeah, I'm I'm okay with boats. I've I've like I said, I took an Alaskan cruise, I took a Canadian cruise once. I enjoyed both of those. I'm not huge on the actual like floating hotel idea. I don't really love the grossness of it, but it was a cool way to see a bunch of stuff, and it was like, you know, very convenient. But there is one thing that I don't know, there's something about being out on like a big, endless expanse, open ocean water, where you know that beneath you is just like hundreds, perhaps thousands of feet of nothingness and unknowing things. There's this very specific fear. It's not just necessarily the fear of water, it's called thalassophobia, and it's specifically a fear of like the depth or like the unknown, daunting expanse of the ocean. And that one it rings very true for me. I totally get that. Sometimes I've been on a boat before, and you just kind of look down and you just start to think about like what is beneath me? I don't know what creatures could be down there, what things could be down there, what unknown, just horrifying things could be down there, and it you could just be lost forever and never found, just sink to the bottom. It creeps me out.

Angela 5:29

I know I do think of like megalodons and stuff.

Daniel 5:32

Yeah, yeah. You know, there is this curse that has been a a tale told for centuries that keys into that very real common human fear, and that is this the curse of the flying Dutchman. So why don't we kind of take a moment to look at this curse and why don't we start with one very specific encounter at a specific point in history? We're gonna go to July 11th, 1881. There was a squadron of the British Royal Navy sailing in the dark waters off the coast of Australia on one ship of that fleet, the HMS Inconstant. Horrible ship name, by the way, right? Yeah, right. It's just a horrible ship name. Inconstant? Yes, the HMS Inconstant.

Angela 6:12

Nobody had like a last name or something?

Daniel 6:14

Uh I guess not.

Angela 6:15

I just think like incontinence.

Daniel 6:17

Yeah, I know, right? It's just awful, awful name. So on the HMS Inconstant on board, there were two princes. Albert Victor, who was second in line to the British throne at the time. Side note, this dude's Wikipedia is wild. We do not have time, unfortunately. But just like, for example, it's now debunked, but there was a while where people thought this dude was Jack the Ripper. So, like, you have to have some crazy stuff going on in your life for people to be like, he might be Jack the Ripper. Also, a gay brothel scandal that he got embroiled in. It's it's a whole bunch of things. Oh my goodness. Okay. Yeah.

Angela 6:50

I feel like someday we need to spend a little more time on these Wikipedias sometimes.

Daniel 6:54

Yes. I mean, I am always squirreling away these Wikipedia rabbit holes.

Angela 6:58

One day they might be like, I understand why you get so much reading enjoyment and most of your reading is done on Wikipedia. Like, I yeah.

Daniel 7:08

There is some treasures there. Yeah, yeah.

Angela 7:11

Solid ones out there. There are some treasures.

Daniel 7:14

Yeah. Okay, anyway, the the prince that you will likely have heard more about, his younger brother.

Angela 7:20

Prince Harry?

Daniel 7:21

No. His little brother, George of Wales. George would one day go on to be King George V. Also, he is the grandfather of Elizabeth II, just to place him so we might know. Which also, now that Elizabeth II is dead, shouldn't we technically be like relating people to King Charles? But it's like that just feels weird. I don't know. It still feels yeah, it feels still feels normal to anchor people with Elizabeth. So Elizabeth II's grandfather. But at this point, he's just a 16-year-old little whippersnapper, and he's in the middle of a multi-year excursion they were on. They were basically touring the British Empire. So, like a lot of ground to cover. There was a lot of thievan and skill duggering going on in all the corners of the earth at the time for the British Empire. That trip was mostly done on the HMS. Okay, the word is pronounced Bacanti, but it really looks like Bachante or something. It looks like but it's Bacanti, which I feel like is just after inconstant.

Angela 8:14

Let's just go all out with the like Boschante. Like we're going all out.

Daniel 8:18

But it's the Bacanti, but it's named after Bacchus. So the the the Greek god of wine, the Bacchanalia. So I was like, okay, legitimate. My favorite thing, I love Bacchanalia. I mean, maybe they should have stayed on the Bacanti. But anyway, on this very specific night that July 11th, we'll go back to on the different boat on the Inconstant. On that night in question, they were sailing, uh, like I said, off the coast of Australia between Melbourne and Sydney, and the night was clear, the water was calm, when all of a sudden, one of the sailors up on a on a tower noticed something on the horizon, and he yelled to everyone else. There would be 13 exactly, 13 a little spooky crew members would go on to see what they saw. It started as a red glow directly in front of the inconstant. Eventually, the sailors started to see silhouetted along that red glow the outline of a boat. They could see its mast and its outrigging and all that. When they saw that ghostly glowing ship, apparently most of them started, you know, kind of screaming, We know what this is, we're seeing, and they said, We are seeing the flying Dutchman, and they were terrified. They became immediately convinced that that was a bad omen, that bad things were coming. Maybe there would be a bad storm.

Angela 9:29

It was probably a UFO.

Daniel 9:31

Yeah, very I mean, probably just aliens.

Angela 9:33

All right, end of episode, case close. Up next.

Daniel 9:36

Flying Dutchman, aliens, yeah.

Angela 9:37

Maybe cursed, maybe not. So I'll see you next week.

Daniel 9:40

So these sailors had been hearing stories all their lives, and seeing this thing up close and personal felt like an omen on top of a bad dream, on top of a you know, red flag, maybe a red glowing boat, but the warning signs could not be any clearer to these men. They needed to get the fuck out of here, they wanted to leave, they, you know, they alerted everyone else. By the time they alerted anyone else and some more, some more crew members came out, the the ghostly image had disappeared. So these hardened sailors, these like gruff guys, were all pretty freaked out. And that's because the curse of the flying Dutchman, which many of us have heard, you know, it is a boat cursed to sail the seas, the oceans forever, never able to reach port, never able to return home. That curse isn't necessarily just the boat itself, a curse on the boat and on the crew of the boat. That curse also does apply to people who see the boat. So they were it's a two-way curse. These people were freaked out, not because it's just like, oh god, what is this horrifying thing we're seeing? But there's this idea that the curse of the flying Dutchman is in itself contagious. It's both the flying Dutchman is both a victim and a harbinger of things to come for you. So that explains a little bit of their fear. And to really cement the idea of this means bad things, just a few hours later, after their encounter with the flying Dutchman, that first sailor who saw it and alerted everyone else, around 10 a.m. that morning, just a few hours later, he did fall from a high position on some outrigging and was killed when he landed. There's a a diary and it it's a brutal.

Angela 11:16

You didn't just swan dive into the water.

Daniel 11:17

No, no, no. There's a diary that talks about this. There's a diary that talks about this whole thing, and it is brutal. They say he was literally, quote, smashed to atoms. And it's like, oh boy. And as first of all, I was like, I didn't even know they knew about atoms back in the 1880s. So science.

Angela 11:32

Wait, are you I thought that was like some biblical phrase, smash to atom or something. Smash to atoms, like A T O M.

Daniel 11:39

Yeah, yeah.

Angela 11:40

Okay, yeah. I guess I never thought about that happen. I just okay, I mean, I just alright. Well, I'm just accepting a new reality right now. Oh, please. I guess I don't think about people falling out of rigging often, but I just kind of thought you fell into the water.

Daniel 11:56

I mean, he maybe landed on a deck. I mean, water at height is like concrete, they say. The surface tension of water is not like a fun, ooh, I landed in the pool.

Angela 12:04

I struggle with like scale. I wasn't thinking about how big these boats might be.

Daniel 12:08

Yeah. Yeah, he maybe fell from a high.

Angela 12:10

I mean, people were falling off of the top of the Titanic into the water and surviving.

Daniel 12:16

I don't know if many of those people were surviving.

Angela 12:18

I mean, they didn't survive for long, but that's for another. There is no scenario in which I know anything about what I'm talking about.

SPEAKER_03 12:27

Yeah, I think I think really we don't think that man would have died from that horrifying fall. I don't buy it.

Angela 12:33

Okay, move me along.

Daniel 12:35

Yeah, yes, moving on. So did these 13, well, and I guess 12 remaining after that first calamity, did they have something to worry about? Like, were were these well now?

Angela 12:45

Their numbers down to 12, so they're sitting pretty again. I mean, I would have been spooked to high hell if that had happened. I would have been traumatized just in general because it sounds it was disgusting as fuck. Yeah. But like, yeah, I would have been so I would have been like, get me off this boat right now.

Daniel 12:58

Well, and apparently at the next port, the the the journal has an entry. It doesn't say this guy died, but it says the second or it says at the next port, the admiral was smitten down. End of note. And it's just like, what does that mean? So there was like I mean, yeah. I mean, it's like he something happened to him.

Angela 13:21

I've had a few guys tried to smitten me down before and it wasn't it wasn't like anything to write home about, but I wouldn't call it a curse.

Daniel 13:28

Yeah. And I mean, so something it sounds like something happened to that guy. And this is a stretch, but remember how I said that that prince earlier, Prince Albert Victor? Remember when I said he was second to the throne, but then it was his brother who became king? So obviously something happened. This is 10 years after their encounter with the flying Dutchman, but he did end up dying of pneumonia and influenza during the pandemic. The there was a great pandemic, influenza pandemic of 1889 to 1892. He fell ill and died of pneumonia at the age of 28 during that. So I don't know, like Wait, hold up.

Angela 14:00

Um, I guess I need to brush off my uh British monarchy history because that's something we study quite a bit here in America. Um You said this was the grandfather of Queen Elizabeth or the father?

Daniel 14:15

Grandfather of Queen Elizabeth.

Angela 14:16

Okay, that's where I was confused because her father, I know it was the whole Wallace Simpson thing.

Daniel 14:22

Yeah, this is not like the Wallace Simpson, her uncle marrying Wallace Simpson having to abdicate. That's it's her great uncle, her grandfather's brother, who did not reach the throne. So it was the second the the younger brother who ended up becoming king, much like her grandpa. So yeah, Elizabet Elizabeth becoming queen was like two times a younger brother had to become the less likely, you know, king.

Angela 14:45

Uh and then she gave us Charles. And if it wasn't him, we would have gotten Andrew. Oh god, yeah. Let's not think of things that could be. Let's just move along.

Daniel 14:56

So I I mean, whether that's the curse, I mean it was a influenza pandemic, it was 10 years. This is kind of reminds me of some of those curse of Tutin common ones where it was like this guy then died like eight years later, and it's like, yeah, people die. So yeah, but maybe the other 10, I guess, or 11, however many are left, I'm losing count. Did they actually see something? Like, what was this thing they saw? There's clearly people had been talking about seeing this kind of thing before. So, like, what is that thing? How is that that there was this story?

Angela 15:24

Right, like is it a mirage of the sun or something? Exactly.

Daniel 15:26

So, like, let's let's look back at what people said, where these stories started. We can maybe start to figure out what the story really is and what it could be. So, in order to figure that out, we're gonna go back a few hundred years, even from the 1880s, and we're gonna go back to a time when the Dutch were just dominating the seas. Real quick aside about the name, it's called the Flying Dutchman, which in Dutch is die fliegende Hollander, which should really be like the flying Hollander, the flying person from Holland. And there's this whole thing where Holland is like a state or a province of the Netherlands. So you can be from Holland and you're Dutch, but you can be Dutch and not from Holland. So there's this whole thing where it's like we call it the flying Dutchman, but technically it's the flying Hollander. It gets really complicated, and even Dutch people message it.

Angela 16:12

But it has the better ring to it, and it's more marketable.

Daniel 16:15

I mean, the flying Dutchman sounds better.

Angela 16:17

Yeah, I know what's got my vote.

Daniel 16:19

I like the Hollander. I think the Hollander, it just for accuracy, I prefer it to be accurate.

Angela 16:23

The Flying Hollander versus the Flying Dutchman. I like the flying Dutchman better.

Daniel 16:29

Well, either way, let's figure out the first literary references to the Flying Dutchman appears. The first one I could find was in 1790 in a travel narrative by John McDonald. It basically just tells the story of a Dutch ship that tried to make it to safe harbor during a terrible storm, but it failed to be able to do so and was lost at sea. It was then reported that visions of this ghostly ship were then seen during bad weather or when bad things were going to happen. Five years later, there was another account in George Barrington's voyage memoir. Uh, it tells the story of a Dutch warship that sank with everyone on board. That then was seen again. It would be then seen again racing towards other ships during stormy weather. Interestingly, in this story itself, it kind of debunks itself. There's a story, they're talking about this crew seeing this ship race towards them. It's like this dark, ominous ship racing towards them. And then later, like it's like, oh, and then the weather cleared up and they realized it was just some dark clouds.

Angela 17:27

So it's like truly like everyone's getting a little spooked. They're like all, you know, like I can imagine you get a little bit of like cabin fever when you're on a boat. And this is why, like, I think um there are so many, like, there's so much maritime lore of like, you know, mermaids, megalodons, um, great white sharks big enough to eat boats. And maybe to your point of like the the spooky, murky dart, you know, deep down below. We only have explored a fraction of the ocean. So maybe there is all kinds of crazy shit going on down there. Who knows? But also in the same all the bits and pieces to create some like real mindfuckery are there. Like you're also gliding along like a glassine surface that is going to be reflecting things off of it and creating, you know, mirages or shadows or whatever. And so it is a it's a scenario that is completely ripe for just losing your dang mind. Yeah, and starting to see ghost ships and and being like, it's a dark cloud, it's a boat, it's the flying Dutchman, it's nothing.

Daniel 18:29

Exactly. Like there were just this is a time when boats started going everywhere, they were doing these huge long journeys. People were on boats for months at a time, they were seeing new things. Like you said, there's crazy.

Angela 18:39

Okay, my like worst nightmare.

Daniel 18:41

Yeah, it's so at this time there was this company called the Dutch East India Company. You've maybe heard of her before. Um, they essentially like they were like this giant, uh almost uh acted like a nation themselves. They've signed treaties, they waged war, they had a standing army of one point of 10,000 people, they had 70,000 employees.

Angela 18:59

Yeah, wasn't it like the British colonies and the Dutch were the two big superpowers at one point? And I think Spain was really, really powerful at that point in time, too.

Daniel 19:08

The Portuguese as well. Yeah. Yes, so the Dutch East India Company, they were basically the Dutch Empire in Asia. There was also the Dutch West Indies Company that that was like the pirates of the Caribbean stuff, which is actually we'll get into there really isn't much uh lore about the flying Dutchman in the Caribbean or in the Americas. It is a strictly like Atlantic Indian Ocean coast of Africa, the Cape of Good Hope. This is this is a very important part of this, the the route. They were going, you know, obviously over to Asia for spices and for other trade. And near the very southern tip of Africa, not the actual southern tip of Africa, is what's called the Cape of Good Hope. It was an important supply stop along the route to Asia at the time. It's a really dangerous place. It's called the Cape of Good Hope, but like the original European name from the first European explorer in modern times, which is like the 1400s, he named it the Cape of Storms. But then, like the Portuguese king a little rebranded, yeah. The Portuguese king a little later was like, hmm, let's call it the Cape of Good Hope. So there's it was like it is, it's very stormy, it's a dangerous place. But they just like kind of PR zhuzed up the name.

Angela 20:16

It's like Greenland, Iceland. Somebody came through with their PR kit and was like, we're gonna rebrand, we're thinking about this differently now.

Daniel 20:24

Exactly. But it is either way, it's a dangerous but important place. And so it was while sailing these treacherous waters around the Cape of Good Hope that most of these stories about this potential what happened to the the original Flying Dutchman, but then also people being lost after seeing the flying Dutchman, or you know, it helps explain away, oh, a bunch of you know, all our loved ones just mysteriously just they went on a boat and we never saw them again. Saying they saw the flying Dutchman, or if there were like rumors of the flying Dutchman being seen, it just kind of like adds a realness to sometimes a very what seems like incredibly random tragedy.

Angela 21:02

Right. Yeah. It's like saying that people in the 27 Club were murdered, it just helps people cope better. Yeah, that makes sense.

Daniel 21:09

Exactly. And remember, this is like, you know, we're talking as early as into the 1400s. These boats had no radio, no sanitation, yeah, no GPS, no weather forecasts.

SPEAKER_00 21:20

And it was like the stars, look at the stars.

Daniel 21:23

I mean, the maps they had were just like hand-drawn. These they were just like disappearing off the edges of hand-drawn maps at this time. It's like, what's over there? Let's find out. It's uh it's a w, I mean, yeah, even under the best of circumstances.

Angela 21:35

Good on them for the bravery it must have taken to. I mean, I I don't want to go down a rat hole, but it's like, what kind of a man becomes a sailor in that day and age where it's like it must have been. I mean, I know that it the whole socioeconomical structure was completely different than it was today, and it was not easy to be like a man making money or a person making money or a self made. Like you didn't get rich just for like having a business for the most part, like it wasn't. Easy. So I'm assuming there was a bit more of a desperation or a like minimal options kind of a thing. Because how else would you get these things like staffed up? I guess.

Daniel 22:10

Yeah, there aren't many liberal arts degrees back in those days and all that. It was like, yeah, be a sailor. This sounds awful. Even in the best situation, you're still like I was saying, a vacation cruise creeps me out in the ocean. Now imagine having it be your job. You're on a rickety boat built hundreds of years before like engineering standards, and like they just were slapping these things together with wood, and you're at the whims of the wind trying to travel across the whole world. That is horrifying. There's pirates. You could either be killed or forced to become a pirate. Like, there's so many horrifying things about forced to become a pirate?

Angela 22:42

That sounds fun.

Daniel 22:44

Not to mention the diseases, like just everything.

Angela 22:46

And everybody stinks, and everything is probably kind of damp. Yeah, it sounds awful. And the food probably sucks.

Daniel 22:54

So it's like obviously these sailors and people who lose their loved ones. There's people who say they see the flying Dutchman at shore when they're waiting for their loved ones to never return, etc. It makes sense for them to have these stories to cope with these horrifying things, the horrifying realities of the world. Like it's not their fault that they didn't understand weather phenomena or tides or crazy things, if they were seeing these things and trying to give them some sort of form to understand them in their world. So after all these people talking about it, we start to see it in literature, like I said, in the 1790s. Interestingly enough, the 1790s, right when we start to see the first real concrete examples of the flying Dutchman being like a thing people are clearly talking about, they're writing about it in things that were fortunate enough to survive to modernity. So it's like the fact that we have this record is just this is what survived. So obviously, people were talking about it before, it was probably written about before, etc. But at that time, around the 1790s, that's exactly when the Dutch East India Company, which at one point, you know, like I said, it was this giant empire, it was worth like what would now be trillions of dollars, etc. It actually dissolved in 1799 because of like corruption and smuggling, and they had to they had one.

Angela 24:04

I mean, I'm sure it was a a descent, but like in one they can pinpoint it to one year that the entire Dutch East India Company dissolved.

Daniel 24:11

It was a long process, yes, it was a slow decline, but that was the year that it like they signed, sealed, delivered. They said, Okay, Dutch government, you're taking our assets and debts. We are walking away from this, and they they ceased to be a company. So, like the largest company in the world basically collapsed right around the time that the this this legend on their their shipping routes was becoming worldwide famous. So I think that's just like a very interesting moment in time. Like, were they the original cursed victims?

Angela 24:37

Yeah. Wow.

Daniel 24:39

So then throughout the 1800s, the story starts to evolve. We see it more and more. It starts to kind of take form from these early versions of just like a ship lost at sea. Eventually, being a bunch of different authors talk about it, including people like Sir Walter Scott. Eventually, new details like it being the crew being punished for some great crime they committed, having this pestilence put upon them, and that's why nobody would let them come to see it.

Angela 25:06

Having a pestilence put upon them.

Daniel 25:08

Yeah, yep.

Angela 25:08

Uh I've had a few pestilences put upon me in my day. I'm just kidding.

Daniel 25:14

But yeah, people get to just like add little embellishments to the story. They start to talk about murders they may have committed. There's piracy themes added in, things about ill-gotten wealth. Basically, just like the more story they can add to it, the more interesting and compelling they can make the story. This all kind of culminates in 1821 with some writings by a guy named John Howison. This is the first like version of what is now really considered the full story of the curse, which is the curse of Captain Hendrik van der Deken.

Angela 25:44

Hendrik van der Deken?

Daniel 25:46

Yes, yeah, very Dutch name. But the story focuses on his journey from the Netherlands to Batavia, which was now what is called Jakarta, Indonesia. Um this was in 1641. A lot of these details would be solidified up in later writings, but this is where it starts to take form. They get to the Cape of Good Hope and there's a horrible storm. And Captain Vanderdecken insisted that he was not scared and that he would not turn the ship around no matter what happened, no matter how he insisted he was not scared of the life. He's like, I am not afraid of the ocean.

Angela 26:19

I'm a big boy, okay?

Daniel 26:22

I mean, it's hubris. He he is not afraid of the power of nature, and you should be.

Angela 26:27

Okay.

Daniel 26:28

So apparently it all culminates with him eventually straight up tying himself to the ship's wheel and just like steering it straight into the storm. There's stories of his crew mutinying over this, but then he shoots the mutineer, the like the leader of the mutiny. Yeah, it gets wild. Yeah. And then after he shoots the mutineer, some stories have a strange figure board the boat, either the devil or God. It's not really known. And then the captain tries to shoot the figure, and the figure deflects the bullet, the bullet returns and hits the captain. Okay. A lot of weird stuff, but essentially, because he attacked this figure, the figure, God or the devil, curses him and his ship in one telling of the story. They said, You and your ship are cursed and will sail restlessly forever. You can never anchor your ship or reach a harbor. You will only drink bile and your food will be red hot iron.

Angela 27:20

Like, holy fuck. Okay, everything sounded palatable and manageable. We'll work with this until that part. You can only drink bile and your food will be red hot iron. What's the point of traveling the world if you can't have some tasty snacks?

Daniel 27:34

Exactly. Awful, awful, awful. Also, another thing that I uh saw a lot was this idea that the crew of the flying Dutchman would try to send letters to people because they want those letters to be carried to their loved ones on shore, their loved ones who are long dead hundreds of years ago, they don't realize that their ghosts, that their loved ones on land have already moved on and died and everything. And like you're not supposed to accept these letters because those letters are them themselves cursed, right? So just a lot of like great lore around the flying Dutchman.

Angela 28:05

Yeah.

Daniel 28:06

There's actually a great thing. There may have been a real life captain that this Captain Vanderdecken was based on. There was a real life Dutch captain.

Angela 28:14

Oh, that's not like a specific.

Daniel 28:19

Yeah. But there was a real guy named Bernard Faca, iffy name. Whoa, whoa. What? Fernard E. Facka.

Angela 28:27

Uh does he have a um surviving male sign and any single, I would like to be Angela Faka?

Daniel 28:37

Okay, so Bernard Faca, he was this real life Dutch captain, and he would make that route between Europe and Indonesia back and forth. He was known for doing it so quickly and so skillfully that rumors started swirling about him that he was straight up like had a deal with the devil and was like in line with the devil.

Angela 28:55

Okay, and then he's just sitting there on his boat, like stomping his foot, like, I'm just fucking good at my job, you twat.

SPEAKER_03 29:01

Just let a dude excel. Like he's good at something. Like, just why does it have to be the devil? That's insane.

Angela 29:06

But I know I would be like, okay, like just let a man live. Like, let me be good.

Daniel 29:10

Yeah, so he was this like infamously quick captain. And so there's this idea that he's the archetype that that's the the basis for this Captain Vanderdecken. Obviously, there's no story of Bernard Faca going into a storm and dying, etc. But it's just interesting that there was like a real guy that was kind of, you know, turned into this mythological person.

Angela 29:29

Yeah. That's a badass story, though. Like I can just totally imagine. I mean, you can like see it in your mind's eye. We've probably seen it in movies already of like the captain at the wheel and the wind and the water, and everything is all sloshing around and everyone is mutinying, and he's like onward and oh, like into the into the storm.

Daniel 29:47

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I'm sure it was cinematic.

Angela 29:50

I I feel like it's probably a scene in like the Pirates of the Caribbean. Like I just haven't seen it in a long time you you mentioned Pirates of the Caribbean.

Daniel 29:56

I mean, obviously, the Flying Dutchman figures heavily into I think the second movie, if I remember. It's been a while. Um I don't know.

Angela 30:02

I remember there was like Davy Jones's locker.

Daniel 30:05

Yeah, I think that was the sequel. Maybe like the yeah, and they I don't think I've seen all of those anyway. Like, I think Penelope Cruz eventually is. I haven't seen those movies since um, but you you talk about that. Obviously, this story persisted through history. So let's look at just a couple more really famous encounters. One that is widely reported is in April of 1823, the HMS 11 was sailing near Point Danger in South Africa. Great name.

Angela 30:30

Finally, something is labeled as what's inside the can.

Daniel 30:35

Yeah, they're like, let's rename it to Point Unicorn. Yeah, yeah. So the HMS 11, they were sailing near Point Danger. They saw what they thought was their companion vessel about two miles away.

Angela 30:46

A companion vessel sounds like a new age term for a boyfriend.

Daniel 30:51

Yeah, right.

Angela 30:52

But this is my companion vessel, Gary.

Daniel 30:56

I'm thinking of trading up for a newer model.

Angela 30:58

Yeah.

Daniel 30:59

So the crew of the Levin, they thought it was their companionship, but then when they got a little closer, they realized it didn't look right. It didn't look like their companionship, and they knew it well. And then eventually they could see the people, the crew on board, and they could see these were not people they knew. And Captain William Fitzwilliam. Huh? Yeah.

Angela 31:17

Everybody's name is like a double take for me. Every name in this story. I'm just like, who are we talking about?

Daniel 31:23

Yeah. So the captain attempted to approach, but the other ship then kind of like sailed away and made almost like an evasive maneuver, but then later appeared again and seemed to lower a like a smaller boat into the water and then disappeared into the night. So they were like, okay, that was weird, but maybe they were doing some like exercises or something. We we mistook the boat, they did something weird, we just whatever. So when the Levin then reached Simon's Bay, their destination, their companion vessel was nowhere to be found. And they're like, Well, that was weird. We saw it, it should have been behind us quickly. The real vessel, the companion vessel, eventually did arrive a week later, and its logs showed that it was in fact 300 miles away when the Levin had that encounter with what they thought was their companion vessel.

Angela 32:07

Oh my god, I thought you were gonna say like everybody on board was dead in their beds. They were rotted skeletons, and they just collided serenely into port and like hit up against the side and everything.

Daniel 32:19

But it's a boat full of people who all saw this phantom boat, and like these are trained military naval, you know, like sea people, seamen, pardon the word.

Angela 32:29

I suppose, yeah. Ew.

Daniel 32:31

And then another story in an 1835 retelling of his travels in India, our Montgomery Martin, uh traveler and author, recounts how right after telling some people on his boat about the Flying Dutch, when they kind of like laughed at him and made fun of it and mocked him. One guy in particular, the second officer, mocked him and said, like, oh, you're just playing into old superstitions, etc. Moments later, a giant wind came through, and that second officer himself, who had been mocking him, went up into a like a watchtower, climbed up some rigging to look, and he himself immediately yelled, Voila, le volant Hollande. They're French people. So he said, Oh my god.

Angela 33:13

I thought I was like, Are we having an event? Is something going on?

SPEAKER_03 33:17

Sorry, yeah, it was a French boat, should have explained.

Angela 33:19

You gave me no warning.

Daniel 33:21

But he says, Oh, it's the flying Dutchman. And there was so there was like this crazy wind, and the boat came flying in at them. The wind was so strong that they were paralyzed, like it was too strong of a wind to use sails. The captain was like, No, we can't do anything. The captain said that they dared not even, quote, show a pocket handkerchief to the breeze. So it was just like we can't do anything. But somehow this other ship was able to sail through this wild wind in like a way that no real ship should have been able to maneuver.

Angela 33:50

I feel like all these like stories I'm like sounds wild and wacky to me, but in my head, I'm like, I don't understand how boats work. So sure, you tell me, pal.

Daniel 34:00

Well, the ship came right up next to them, uh, quick as lightning, apparently. And the people on board could see a crew on this other ghostly ship in the just in the the log travel log I was reading. They said they could quote see people on her poop, meaning the poop deck. But I was just like, oh god.

Angela 34:19

I'm like sitting here being like, oh my god, were they? I feel like the crew was either like everybody was really hot or everybody was like eyeballs falling out of their heads.

Daniel 34:30

They were probably groati, no offense.

Angela 34:31

They were probably groati and oh my god, but how amazing would that be if there was like this like sneaky, mysterious, stealthy little boat going around and everybody is just like hot. I don't know why this is just a sexually charged episode.

Daniel 34:44

But is there a romance novel about the flying Dutchman? I'm sure there's like some hot crew in the world.

Angela 34:49

I could write one.

Daniel 34:50

I mean, you I mean they're all working physical jobs, they might be in good job, they could be some hotties on board, but oh god, I'm sure.

Angela 34:56

But it's like daddy. But then yeah, they probably all stank and were like half rotted from waterlogged.

Daniel 35:04

Yeah. Well, anyway, so they this ship, uh, they see this crew, and the crew seems to be indicating that they want to talk with them. Like I said, there are these tales of wanting to communicate and send these letters.

Angela 35:16

Are they doing like the competitors, do you think?

Daniel 35:18

Or do you think like they're doing the call me, the call me. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well, and that's the thing is the the captain of the boat sent for a trumpet to be a speaking trumpet to be able to yell back and forth, I guess.

Angela 35:29

Oh, by the time I eat a megaphone. Yeah, exactly.

Daniel 35:32

Yeah, by the time that showed up, though, the boat had disappeared.

SPEAKER_02 35:35

Oh.

Daniel 35:36

So it's just another like this whole group of people all seeing the same thing. One final story I saw of another large group of people seeing this. This was a 1991 newspaper article about a 1939 event. Oh. This was a an entire beach full of people in Glen Cairn, South Africa. There was a beach full of people. They were at False Bay, which is right on the other side of the Cape of Good Hope. That's the bay inside the Cape False Bay, also another great name. Just like some of them, they were so realistic, and then others are fake names as hell. So there's some a real dichotomy with the names. But this whole group on the beach, everyone witnessed a phantom boat appear out of the fog, glide across the water directly towards land, faster than any boat they've ever seen, and then just disappeared into the fog again before it like it was on a like a collision path with some like buildings on the on the shore, but it just like disappeared into the fog.

Angela 36:30

And was it like an old tiny boat? Was it like a boat from the 1600s?

Daniel 36:33

It was like, yeah, an old, old sail ship that a boat like that they had never seen and should not have been in that area.

Angela 36:40

With a bunch of hotties on board.

Daniel 36:42

Maybe there were this time. They didn't say anything about the crew.

Angela 36:44

They could see the ripped abs from miles away, and they were like, Come faster, come faster to me.

Daniel 36:50

But but yeah, like people are seeing this thing for hundreds of years, it becomes a staple of culture. Eventually, there's a there's an opera written by Richard Wagner called De Fliegende Hollande. I pardon my German, but that's you know the Fliegende Hollander, like that. On top of that, there's you know, movies and books written about it. Like you said, you saw it in Pirates of the Caribbean, so a modern blockbuster. Right. Um, I mean, it shows up in SpongeBob SquarePants. It's just there are theme park roller coasters called the Flying Dutchman. It's just yeah, it is a staple of of of our culture.

Angela 37:28

Because it's a badass name. The Flying Dutchman, that's cool.

Daniel 37:31

Yeah, right. So that I guess that brings us to what could these people have been seeing? If if it's not, they're all getting in together and being like, hey, let's all just say we saw this boat or whatever. Like these are groups of people saying they saw the same thing. So it's either they're all in on it, they're all hallucinating, or there's a real fucking ghost ship. That could be true, just sailing around, right?

Angela 37:50

Yeah. What's interesting to me is that it's not confined only to have been seen by the crews on boats, because that's when I would be like, oh yeah, people are just a little whacked. You know, you're out to see, there's a lot of factors at play.

SPEAKER_04 38:05

People see crazy shit.

Angela 38:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 38:06

Their brains go a little crazy on water.

Angela 38:08

But the fact that people on land just chilling at the beach, brains intact, nothing, nothing squidging about up in their in their heads, were um also having the same experience. Like that is sketchy.

Daniel 38:23

Okay, well, let me give you two possible explanations then. Let me introduce you to my two of my friends, Saint Elmo and Morgan LeFay. We'll talk about this. There are two phenomena that might explain what people are seeing. The first is called Saint Elmo's Fire. This is named after Saint Erasmus of Formia. Um, he was the patron saint of sailors, another wild Wikipedia article. There's too much to talk about, but one example is there's this story that he was killed being tortured by a windlass, which is kind of like a a winch or something you would wind a cable around because he was often depicted holding one because he was the patron saint of sailors. And there was this also this thing where they used to paint, like back in old timey paintings, they would paint Christian martyrs with the thing that was used to kill them. So people started assuming maybe that he was killed with this thing, and they were like, How would you kill this guy with this thing? Well, you could wind his intestines on it. So they came up with this story that his intestines were wound as torture onto yeah, and it's like, Jesus Christ, people.

Angela 39:23

Sent my brain down far too many paths today.

Daniel 39:26

Sorry, that's a whole that was a whole other thing. But another account of his life was that he actually died a quote, peaceful and holy end. So the jury's out weird, yeah. Anyway, St. Elmo's fire.

Angela 39:37

It's always that. It's always remember that one guy um from the Hope Diamond where it was like, oh, he maybe got torn apart by dogs or he died of old age. It's like you guys need to just stop messing with your people.

Daniel 39:49

People and their stories they're weaving, yeah, recounting.

Angela 39:52

Yeah.

Daniel 39:52

So anyway, St. Elmo's Fire is a completely different thing. It is just named after him because of the sailors. It is a physical phenomenon that occurs under certain conditions when a strong electrical field builds up, causing the air around pointed objects, so like ship masts make a perfect pointed object in this example. It causes the air around those things to ionize and turn into plasma. That then causes it to glow. There's like a lot of science going on here, but long story short, but this seems so circumstantial. But it happens a lot. There's it with right circumstances, boats can just start glowing, things can start glowing. There's crazy stuff. Like there were I read some articles that can just happen with leaves, blades of grass, chimneys, even cattle's horns have done this. So it's like if I saw some glowing cows running towards me, like I am not a believer, but I would reconsider my thoughts about the universe if I saw glowing cows running at me.

Angela 40:47

Fair. It's like all the times we're sitting here being like, everybody believed in magic for 10,000 years. Maybe it has happened at least once, and then now it's like, all right, well, maybe, but then I'm like sad because I'm like, well, that's not cool. That's not real magic.

Daniel 40:59

I want to think that's but like imagine you see another boat, it's glowing. I mean, a glowing boat. That is what we're seeing. Granted, this is always a blue or violet glow, and we specifically heard people say a red glow. But uh violet can turn into red in some people's mind. I don't know. I this does seem like it could line up with some of these. And and back, especially back in the day, like all of a sudden your own boat is glowing, you're like, holy fuck, I am cursed, right? Like, if my I looked up and I our boat was glowing, I'd be like, oh well, we're doomed.

Angela 41:27

If I was on a carnival cruise and it suddenly just started glowing red, I would just be like, Fuck hell. Yeah. Is real and I'm on it.

Daniel 41:35

Well, like today, I would be like, oh, there's a scientific explanation. Cool. I wish I had an edible right now. But like back in the day, it's like God is furious.

Angela 41:43

No, you'd be freaking out. Stop acting like you would be, you would be freaking out.

Daniel 41:48

I don't know. Like, for example, I've seen the I've seen Aurora Borealis. That was super cool. I recently went to a bioluminescent bay in Puerto Rico where like the the uh the dino flagellets glow.

Angela 41:58

Yeah, but that's entirely explainable. If you were if you were on a carnival cruise and it starts glowing red, you're gonna be like speaking in tongues.

Daniel 42:07

I've listened to this podcast. I know about St. Elmo's fire, I'm not worried anymore about it. I know it makes sense. So that is could be one thing. Uh is this could explain the glowing boats people have seen.

Angela 42:18

Yeah, I don't I'm curious about Morgan Le Fay. Like, what about Morgan Le Fay?

Daniel 42:22

So it's actually so it's actually Fata Morgana, is what I'm going to talk about, but it is named after Morgan Le Fay. Do you know who Morgan Le Fay is?

Angela 42:30

Like a sorceress, right?

Daniel 42:32

Yeah, she's she's a uh a character in Arthurian legend. At times, Morgan Le Fay, the fairy, she's often a fairy, sometimes not. Sometimes is Arthur's sister, half-sister, sometimes not a sister at all, sometimes a friend, sometimes a foe. She's you know, a she's a dualistic character. She's often fucks with Arthur. One of her greatest versions is she curses a cloak or a mantle to immediately burn alive whoever wears it, and then sends it to uh Arthur. Arthur gets warned by the damsel of the lake, and so Arthur, when the the woman comes to deliver it, is like, no, you have to wear it first, and forces the woman to put it on instead. And she's quote, burned to coals. Some wild stories.

Angela 43:15

I feel like there's like um a drunk history version of the story of Arthur that is just like Well, I mean, kind of side note, Morgan Le Fay was on my my brainstorm list.

Daniel 43:26

I was gonna do an episode about her, and then when I saw that Fata Morgana was named after her and tied into the Flying Dutchman, I was like, oh, I gotta do this now.

Angela 43:34

Okay, I want you to still do an episode about Morgan Le Fay.

Daniel 43:36

Morgan Le Fay episode one day will happen.

Angela 43:38

There's a lot more Unless I snatch it from you first.

Daniel 43:42

The reason this was named after uh Morgan Le Fay, but in Italian, is there is this optical phenomenon called Fata Morgana that in a specific spot in Italy, the Strait of Messina, near Sicily, it happened a lot, and they would often describe it as fairy castles and also Morgan LaFay. Le Fay had connections to Sicily, so they just named it Fata Morgana after Morgan Lefey. This phenomenon happens again under very specific conditions, but it's common enough that it happens a lot where ghost-like mirage images uh uh of distant objects on the horizon can be formed. It's because different layers of air at different temperatures can form. Like, remember you ever do that thing in like elementary school where you pour different uh liquids of different densities together and they formed layers in the in the beaker.

Angela 44:31

I was thinking more of like um there are certain shots that are felt like that where you have different densities of alcohol and you make like a rainbow shot or something.

SPEAKER_03 44:40

If you want to be very expensive, elementary school.

Angela 44:42

Come on, Daniel.

Daniel 44:43

I was trying to trying to make this a family podcast, but like you said, you already be out of some explicit rating. Anyway, so light moves at different speeds, essentially, different ways through those different densities of airs. If they orient themselves in a weird way, basically, you can get this thing where the light leaving distant objects at the bottom of the object actually reaches like the top of your eye. So you you interpret it as being upside down. It can move, there can be multiple images, they can be floating above the horizon, they can dance around, they can appear and disappear. So it's like, this sounds like the flying Dutchman, right? It is literally, it's like there is science behind it. It's a little complicated. Uh, there was stuff like there were things that didn't really make complete sense to me, but the basics made sense. There's these diagrams on Wikipedia that like show you exactly the air, the the light going through, and then it bends it when it hits certain air, and the reason like they create these kind of like weird rainbows of light arcing and doing different things, but then by the time it hits your eye, it's all jumbled and crazy. So I'm gonna trust the scientists here. It seems a little bit like magic, but you know, I believe it.

Angela 45:48

Okay. There's a fine line. I feel like there's always a fine line between magic and science.

Daniel 45:52

And there's even there's even like a slightly similar version of this. This happens obviously, Fatima Morgana happens on coastal regions, it can also happen at polar regions, where there's another phenomenon that can like combine with it called ice blink, which is like light reflecting off ice and then clouds creating other mirages. It's just like never trust your eyes on the ocean. So it really makes sense that people were seeing these kinds of things. Like I don't think it's that much of a stretch to say most everything these people saw is probably explainable through these types of mirages.

Angela 46:22

Yeah, I feel like I said that earlier and I'm sticking to it. But I do love all the lore, I love the idea of it, and I also feel like I mean it's a badass story. Bad like the flying Dutchman is just a cool name. Like it makes me almost kind of be like, no, don't just explain it all away scientifically. Like it's fun, like it's cool, like ghost ships, and like I mean, of course, it depends on the caliber of the crew onset, boat ships, ghost ships. I'm stirring up a little book idea in my mind that I feel like I could have some sea legs.

Daniel 46:57

Yeah.

Angela 46:58

Okay.

Daniel 47:00

Um, yeah, I mean, to me, it's sort of like the most important thing here is like these people did actually see something, very likely. There are things they could have seen.

unknown 47:10

Yeah.

Daniel 47:10

Um I don't know. And crucially, these phenomena are often accompanied with storms, even volcanic eruptions. So it's like maybe this idea of this kind of like safety myth where it's like you're seeing weird things. Sometimes those weird things are accompanied by even weirder and more dangerous things. So this general sense of like fear or concern, like, hey, you're seeing some weird glowing ship. You're seeing a ship where there shouldn't be one, it's blipping around doing things it shouldn't do. Like, that's a weird thing happening. There's a weird atmospheric condition. They didn't maybe understand that, but it may it's like very convenient that it then turned out to be like, hey, be cautious, ship might be going down. Maybe there's a storm coming in. You see crazy clouds doing things you've never seen before. There's probably a bad storm. That could mean death at, you know, out on the ocean. Yeah. So it like really it's kind of like I can see how they connected A to B to C to D. I mean, it's a little tenuous, but like it seems like there is a real world benefit of having this thing. And it's like maybe just a little caution out on the ocean. To me, yeah, you know, nowadays it's things we see we might call it a UFO, like you said, things we don't fully understand. But like just being a little on on alert when you see something weird doesn't seem like not a horrible idea to me.

Angela 48:27

Yeah. No, I mean, I feel like it sounds like a good idea.

Daniel 48:30

So it's like there is a real I don't think it was intentional, of course, that these sailors were like, let's make a legend and then we'll warn each other about weird stuff. But it kind of worked out, which is like a nice little cursed-ish, like, huh, cool little benefit, like curse approved, I'll take it.

SPEAKER_00 48:44

Look it out for each other, boys.

Daniel 48:46

And like, we do have these things. It very well could be these things, you know. There's explanations of what it could be. So to me, this is squarely cursed-ish territory.

Angela 48:55

Like, oh yeah, agree.

Daniel 48:56

Maybe it's St. Elmo's Fire, maybe it's a cloud, maybe it's Fata Morgana, maybe it's the flying Dutchman, maybe cursed, maybe not.

Angela 49:03

We'll see you next week.

Daniel 49:14

Cursedish is an ish media production. It explores stories of alleged curses, historical mysteries, and supernatural claims. While we do investigate the history and the evidence behind these stories, ultimately you should decide for yourself what to believe. If you have questions, comments, or your own accursed tales to share, send us a hex at uh oh at curstish.com. That's uh oh h all one word at curstish all one word.com