[Richard Wagner was always his own librettist. His operas were often based upon Nordic myths (The Ring of the Nibelung) or medieval legends (Tristan und Isolde, Parsifal). The following article traces possible sources for the story of the Flying Dutchman. - NMR]
The tales of those who offended the gods and were doomed to eternal punishment without the possiblity of death go back to the beginning of time. In many of them, the culprit was doomed to wander forever. Invariably they longed for death, but it constantly eluded their attempts to find it. In some cases redemption was possible, if difficult, to achieve. Such stories especially captured the imagination of superstitious sailors who spent most of their lives as tiny, lonely specks at the mercy of the vastness and might of the oceans.
Below are some of the most famous examples with brief descriptions. Clicking on the links will provice further information on some of them.
GREEK MYTHS (These stories appear in many different versions.)
From Greek mythology we have the story of Tantalus, a king of Phrygia, who stole
nectar and ambrosia from the gods and tried to test their divinity by serving
them the body of his own son, Pelops. The gods restored Polyps to life and condemned
Tantalus to the Underworld where, for all eternity, he has to stand up to his
waist in the water of a lake surrounded by luscious fruit. When he tries to
drink, the water recedes and, when he reaches for fruit, it moves from his grasp.
Thus he is forever tortured by thirst and hunger; he gave us the word "tantalize".
When the Titans revolted against Zeus, Atlas was doomed to stand forever bearing the vault of the heavens on his shoulders. Prometheus, who had been neutral during revolt but was resentful of the gods, created men from clay and brought them fire. An angry Zeus, swearing to annihilate the human race, bound Prometheus so that every day an eagle ate his liver, but every night it grew back only to be eaten once more. He continued to defy the gods of Olympus but was eventually rescued by Hercules and became an immortal.
Sisyphus defied the gods and revealed their secrets. As punishment he has to roll a huge rock up a hill. Every time he nears the top, it falls back and he must start again. As far as we know, he is still pushing.
We encounter a condemned wanderer in Callisto, a nymph who swore to always remain a maiden. There are many versions of how it happened, but she was somehow seduced. As punishment she was turned into a bear. When she died, she became the constellation Ursa Major (Big Bear), also known as the Big Dipper, going around the polar star for eternity and, in Mediterranean latitudes, never setting. Her resulting son became Ursa Minor or the Little Dipper.
THE BIBLE
Cain killed his brother Abel and, when questioned by God, said, "Am I my brother's
keeper?" He was then doomed to wander the earth forever. The English poets,
Coleridge and Wordsworth once planned to co-write a prose-poem based on the
wanderings of Cain, but never completed it.
THE ODYSSEY
Homer's Odysseus was the first great sea-wanderer. All of the other Greeks heroes
returned home safely from the Trojan War, but Odysseus gained the wrath of Poseidon
by blinding one of his sons. He was forced to wander the seas and endure many
trials, among which was his capture by Calypso. Finally, Athena begged Zeus
to allow him to go home. Zeus agreed and sent Hermes to relay his order to Calypso.
Just as Odysseus was sailing away, Poseidon saw him and raised a violent storm
which wrecked his boat. Odysseus was saved by Athena but he still endured more
wandering before he was finally allowed to return to his home kingdom of Ithaca
and his faithful wife, Penelope.
MEDIEVAL VERSIONS
The Wandering Jew and Kundry, his female counterpart, were featured in many
medieval stories. While the Jew has to wait for Christ's return to cease his
wandering, the sacred power of the Holy Grail finally allowed Kundry to die.
Her story is told in Wagner's Parsifal.
There was a Dutch legend in which a murderer named Falkenberg was doomed to sail until judgment on a crewless ship while two spectral figures, one dark and one light, played at dice for his soul. This ship appears in Coleridge's (1797-98) tale of The Ancient Mariner, one of the earliest and best-known stories about a doomed ship. The sailor who shot the albatross was finally saved from what seems like eternal sailing but then has to wander the earth telling his story over and over again to those he meets on the way.
THE DUTCHMAN AND OTHERS
While the stories of spectral ships go back to the beginning of seafaring, the
stories of those trying to round the Cape of Good Hope (at the tip of Africa)
or Cape Horn (tip of South America) had to wait until the sixteenth century.
In 1487 Batholomeu Dias reached the Cape of Good Hope but it wasn't until 1497
that Vasco da Gama finally rounded it and sailed into the Indian Ocean. In 1520,
Magellan sailed through the straits named for him, but it remained for Sir Francis
Drake to finally round Cape Horn in 1578.
Most stories involving the challenge of rounding the Cape of Good Hope probably began with the Dutch who, in 1602, founded the Dutch East India Company and dominated the trade with India. But it was during the period of Britain's naval supremacy that most of the stories appeared in print. By that time, all of the writers assumed that the readers already knew the basic story. In each, the protagonist somehow displeases either God himself or one of the spirits roaming the earth and sea, and is doomed to sail forever. Sometimes redemption is possible, if difficult. In almost every case, the doomed ship has the uncanny ability to sail with no wind and even against a powerful gale, often without any visible crew. Sometimes the ship and its spectral crew vanish before the eyes of the narrator. To all who encountered the phantom ship, especially near the Cape of Good Hope, it usually means death or at least ill-fortune.
In most cases, the Captain's name is Vanderdecken and there may actually have been a late seventeenth century Dutch captain of that name whose ship was lost as he tried to round the Cape of Good Hope from east to west. In any event, the fictional Vanderdecken swears to either God or the Devil that he will succeed in rounding the Cape if it takes him until eternity. God (or the devil) takes him at his word and dooms him to keep trying forever. Other details differ, but in many versions the sailors on the phantom ship try to give letters to their loved ones back home to be mailed. They are invariably addressed to people who are long dead.
A very early description of the Phantom Ship is given in Sir Walter Scott's Rokeby (1813). Parenthetically, Scott's 1821 novel The Pirate, while about a pirate ship rather than a phantom one, introduces the characters whose names, Tröil, Magnus and Minna, would be used in the early French opera Le vaisseau fantôme
Another early English version appeared in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine. May 1821. In Vanderdecken's Message Home, or The Tenacity of Natural Affection, by an anonymous author, the narrator tells the story of Vanderdecken who has been roaming the seas for seventy years since making his rash vow. The captain hails every passing ship to give them letters to deliver but, when attempts are made to deliver the letters, the addressees are long dead. There is no mention of the supernatural, no curse and no possible escape. Wagner picks up this theme when the Norwegian sailors offer to deliver mail for the invisible members of the Dutchman's crew.
The Irish poet, Thomas Moore (1779-1852), a friend of Byron and Shelley and best known for The Last Rose of Summer, wrote The Indian Boat.
The playwright Edward Fitzball who specialized in melodrama in the tradition of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, produced The Flying Dutchman or the Phantom Ship which opened at the Adelphi Theater in London in 1826. He described it as a 'piece of diablerie'. The Dutch Vanderdecken is a farcical villain, held in subjection by a submarine sorceress Roakalda. Every hundred years he is commanded to go on shore to seek a bride to share his fate. While on earth he must remain silent so it becomes a miming part. He kidnaps Lestelle Vanhelm who, like Senta in the opera, is obsessed with the story and the picture of the Dutchman. When he inadvertently speaks, he has to return to the sea, but is saved when his servant rows to his rescue. At the end, British flags are unfurled to general rejoicing and shouts of "huzza". Wagner may have heard of it because it contains elements he used: a ghostly chorus, the painting, the periodic looking for a bride, the song about the Dutchman, and the sailors' repeated "Yo ho"!
In the same year, Wilhelm Hauff produced Die Geschichte von dem Gespensterschiff (The Story of the Ghost Ship), one of the tales in Die Karawane (The Caravan). This has a Muslim setting. The captain and crew are cursed by a dervish just before they kill him. His men nail the captain to the mast and murder one another. Every night they come to life, but by day the ship drifts with its dead cargo and brings misfortune to all who cross its path. The curse could be broken if they could touch earth but they can never reach land. Finally a shipwrecked young man provides some. The complete text of this story, in German, may be found at http://gutenberg.spiegel.de. Find Hauff on the author menu and then click on Märchen-Almanach auf das Jahr 1826.
Heinrich Heine's 1833 Aus den Memoiren des Herre von Schnabelewopski contains the ironic telling of the story which was Wagner's immediate source. The narrator tells of going to a play in Amsterdam in which the Dutchman may now go to shore every seven years instead of one hundred. The story is almost exactly like Wagner's until the heroine, Katerina replies she will be true unto death. At this point, the author tells of a beautiful Dutch girl in the audience who entices him away. After a romantic interlude with her, he returns to the theatre just as Katerina leaps into the sea, the curse is lifted, and the ship sinks. Heine ends with a double moral. For women it is that they should beware of marrying a Flying Dutchmen. For men it is that women will be their undoing. To see the complete text in both German and English, go to http://opera.stanford.edu/. Click on Source texts and then onWagner: Der fliegende Holländer.
In 1839, one Captain Frederick Marryat produced The Phantom Ship or the Flying Dutchman , which may also have been known by Wagner. After a long absence it has recently been republished and is available in paperback.
AMERICAN VERSIONS
In 1718 it was reported the Sir Walter Raleigh's ship, which first brought colonists
to the Carolinas, was still frequently seen off the coast.
Several tales were told about Peter Rugg, a Boston man who made trip to Concord with his young daughter. When ready to return home there was a violent storm, but Peter vowed to get to Boston that night or never see his house again. That is exactly what happened. For many, many years afterward he was seen everywhere in the Northeast and was always accompanied by a violent storm. One account by William Austin (1824 and 1826) can be found at http://gaslight.mtroyal.ab.ca. Click on Text by Author then find Austin, William. While not a sea story, the details of the oath and its consequences predate the printed German stories which could have been Wagner's sources.
James Fenimore Cooper, better known as the author of The Last of the Mohicans, wrote The Red Rover (1827). The beginning and the end are set in Newport, Rhode Island. There is a very strange ship and a stranger Captain Heidegger, variously described as a slaver or a pirate. The ship is often described as if it were enchanted; no crew can be seen on her, she seems to be shrouded in mist and can sail in either a storm or a calm which would defeat other ships. While this ship is not The Flying Dutchman the latter is mentioned several times as always being seen off the Cape of Good Hope,t never in northern waters. The story starts before the American Revolution and the Captain is finally redeemed by his service to the Colonies during that conflict. It has been suggested that this was one of the sources used by the librettists for Le vaisseau fantôme.
Finally, there is Washington Irving's tale The Stormship in his Bracebridge Hall (1822)
AFTER WAGNER
The story of Vanderdecken and his misfortunes continued to attract writers.
In 1878 Henry Irving appeared in David Belasco's Vanderdecken. The
preface tells how, about 1650, a captain who set sail to round Cape of Good
Hope, defied God during storm, and now brings stormy weather with him wherever
he goes.
In 1887 in London there was a Burlesque titled The Demon Seaman and the Lass that Loved a Sailor. In it the Dutchman was played by a woman.
An interesting version of the story is The Death Ship: A Strange Story by William Clark Russell (1888) which takes place at the end of the eighteenth century, i.e. before Wagner, and answers some of the questions which might have been raised about the opera's Dutchman. For example: how did the ship obtain food and other provisions? In an interesting twist, every time the ship tries to round the Cape and is blown back, the captain and crew lose all memory of previous trips and believe that it is still1653.
Another American story about a man doomed to sail for the rest of his life for uttering a curse is Edward Everett Hale's A Man Without a Country (1919). As a young Colonial officer, Philip Nolan got caught up in Aaron Burr's conspiracy. At his treason trial he shouted: "Damn the United States! I wish I may never hear of the United States again!". His wish was granted and he spent the rest of his life on various ships without ever hearing his country mentioned.
In July 11, 1881 a British Royal Navy ship rounding Africa claimed to have seen The Flying Dutchman. A sixteen- year-old midshipman described it thus:
At 4 a.m. The Flying Dutchman crossed our bows. She emitted a strange phosphorescent light as of a phantom ship all aglow, in the midst of which light the mast, spars and sails of a brig 200 yards distant stood out in strong relief.
The look-out who first spotted the ship fell from a mast and died but the midshipman lived to become King George V of England.
Such sightings are now usually dismissed as mirages or optical illusions, but stories on the theme continue to be written. Two interesting examples are Jens Bjørneboe's The Dutchman and a 2001 novel by Brian Jacques: Castaways of the Flying Dutchman.