The Flying Dutchman: Who is Van Der Decken?

It is the legend of a Dutch ship that exploited the wealth of the East. The Flying Dutchman, captained by Van Der Decken, heads towards the Cape of Good Hope for a break, but they do not notice the incoming storm clouds and proceed towards the harbor. The area is rocky. When a storm breaks out and the ship hits the rocks and capsizes, Van Der Decken says, "I will pass the Cape of Good Hope at any cost," but the ship sinks, and of course, this promise does not come true.

However, some of the people in the region said that they saw this ship during several storms, and this legend spread from word to mouth. Then the Flying Dutchman took his place in history as a legend.

The Flying Dutchman (Dutch: De Vliegende Hollander) is a legendary ghost ship, allegedly never able to make port, but doomed to sail the seven seas forever. The myths and ghost stories are likely to have originated from the 17th-century Golden Age of the Dutch East India Company and of Dutch maritime power. The oldest known extant version of the legend dates from the late 18th century. According to the legend, if hailed by another ship, the crew of the Flying Dutchman might try to send messages to land, or to people long dead. Reported sightings in the 19th and 20th centuries claimed that the ship glowed with a ghostly light. In ocean lore, the sight of this phantom ship functions as a portent of doom. It was commonly believed that the Flying Dutchman was a seventeenth-century cargo vessel known as a fluyt.

Many writers have included this story in literature. Washington Irving told the legend in his works The Flying Dutchman on Tappan Sea (1855) and Bracebridge Hall (1822). Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote his poem The Old Sailor, inspired by the legend. The captain of the ship, Van Der Decken (Davy Jones), represents the spirit of the sea in sailor slang. Instead of going to the bottom of the sea, it is used to go to Davy Jones. In many pirate stories, such as Treasure Island and Peter Pan, sailors make references to Davy Jones and the Flying Dutchman when speaking.

Davy Jones first appeared in literature in Daniel Defoe's Four Years Voyages of Captain George Roberts in 1726, and his first character description appeared in Tobias Smollett's The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, published in 1751. (In this definition, Davy Jones is defined as a flame-breathing, horned, frog-headed monster.) Washington Irving, Adventures of the Black Fisherman, Herman Melville, Moby Dick, and Charles Dickens, Bleak House made references to Davy Jones in their works.

Dozens of sailors who believe the story visit the Cape of Good Hope and claim to have seen the ship on stormy days. According to the sailors' words, it is a flying ship. But today, it has been proven by scientific evidence that this ship is just a kind of mirage.

LEGEND 1

Van der Decken, the captain of the ship that sailed from Amsterdam to the East Indies, heads towards the Cape of Good Hope for a break on the way back to the Netherlands. But meanwhile, they do not notice the storm clouds in the sky. Since the area is rocky, when a storm breaks out, the ship hits the rocks and capsizes. The last words of Captain Van der Decken, who is now getting closer to death, are: "Even if it takes until the end of time, I will return to the Cape of Good Hope." Rumor has it that the ship's legend begins with its sinking in 1641. The ship has sunk; However, a story was born that will travel from word of mouth to generations. Van der Decken and his ghost ship are now cursed and doomed to remain in the oceans forever without anchoring in any port. People in the region and many sailors claimed to see this ship whenever there was a storm on the Cape of Good Hope and kept the legend alive...

LEGEND 2

Dutch Captain Willem van der Decken lived in the 17th century. By making a deal with the devil, he disregards the natural disasters created by God. God does not leave this opposition unpunished and condemns him to struggle with the waves in the open seas with an unknown route, without ever setting foot on land.

LEGEND 3

The Flying Dutchman was captained by Bernard Fokke, a sailor who brought the riches of the Indian Ocean to the Netherlands in the 17th century and earned this nickname because he covered the distance between Amsterdam and Jakarta, which could have been covered in 90 days with current technology, under the conditions of that time. They disappeared at the Cape of Good Hope, the tip of Africa, known as the "House of the Devil" among sailors with its rough sea, rocks, and currents.

LEGEND 4

According to the Legend of the Flying Dutchman, Contrary to popular belief, the Flying Dutchman is not the name of the ship but the nickname given to the Captain. A Dutch captain named Van Der Decken was organizing voyages between colonial countries and Europe during the trade period between European and colonial countries. As Van Der Decken set out from Europe with his ship and was about to pass the Cape of Good Hope, the extreme point of South Africa and the African continent, he was caught in a terrible storm. No matter how hard the crew members try to escape, the ship begins to drift into the storm. Captain Decken wants to pass the Cape of Good Hope through the storm and proceed to a sheltered bay. Captain Van Der Decken, who sees his ship going into the storm and heading towards death despite all his efforts, knows that death is approaching.

Seeing that a storm is brewing, the crew requests the Captain to proceed towards a more sheltered bay near the Cape of Good Hope. The captain is drunk and very angry at that moment. He shouts, "No matter what, I will pass the Cape of Good Hope today" and starts singing loudly, using slang words. No matter how hard the crew tries to make the drunk captain, his decision cannot be changed and the ship continues to drift towards the storm. Meanwhile, the crew, who defied the captain, rebelled on the ship, and the Captain was shot on deck and thrown overboard. Afterwards, it became the subject of legends that strange shapes were seen in the sea and the Flying Dutchman was cursed.