"The Flying Dutchman": A Ship That Can't Round the Cape of Good Hope, Drifting at Sea for Hundreds of Years

The longest-circulating ghost ship at sea is "The Flying Dutchman".

The story goes something like this: In the seventeenth century, a Dutch captain sailed his ship eastward, reaching the Cape of Good Hope at the southernmost tip of Africa, where he encountered a great storm. The ship spun in the waves, and the sailors urged him to turn back, but he refused. He swore to the heavens: "Even if I must sail until the end of the world, I will round this cape."

No sooner had he spoken than the sky changed. Legend says the captain was punished for these words, and his ship drifts forever upon these waters, unable to reach shore or enter a port. The sailors are all dead men, and the sails make no sound in the wind.

Sailors who have seen it tell much the same tale: at night, a ship appears in the distance, its hull glowing red, its sails tattered, moving by its own will whether with the wind or against it. Some say that if your ship passes it, your ship will meet with disaster.

A famous recorded instance occurred in 1881, when someone aboard a ship of the British Royal Navy wrote in their diary that at dawn they saw a red-glowing ship coming toward them head-on, only to vanish later. Some later said it was an optical phenomenon at sea, stretching the shadow of a distant vessel.

Whether true or false, the story of "the ship that cannot round" is one sailors have continued to tell.

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