About the tale
The Flying Dutchman is a legendary ghost ship that is doomed to sail the oceans forever. The myth is likely to have originated from 17th-century nautical folklore. The oldest extant version dates to the late 18th century. Sightings in the 19th and 20th centuries reported the ship to be glowing with ghostly light! Barend Fockesz. (Bernard Fokke) is just one of the protagonists in the versions of the story. The written and oral tradition, the captains that were included in the stories were Willem van der Decken, Falkenberg, Van Straten, Ramhout van Dam, Pieter van Halen or Davy Jones. As you can see these are Dutch names because this actually is a Dutch ship; Flying Dutchman, only the last name of the captains, Davy Jones is different because in some of the stories another captain who is american gets appointed and is the new captain of the Flying Dutchman.
Background and culture
Who wrote the story It looks like an easy question to answer, but it isn’t. The story started in the 1678 in Holland and England. In that time it was normal to sail from the Dutch Indies to Holland in 6 months back and forth, but captain Barend Fockesz, a captain of a Dutch VOC ship did it in three months. Almost directly after that the story started that captain Barend Fockesz made a pact with the Devil that for seven years he would make a great fortune, but after that he had to sail forever. In different story Willem van der Decken is the captain of the Flying Dutchman. He wanted to sail on the first Eastern Sunday. There was a very big storm and he wanted to sail even though his wife and his crew said it was very dangerous. It is said that he said to his crew: “ik zal vearen, al is het tot in eeuwigheid.” (English translations: I shall sail, even if it is for eternity) That was the moment he offended the Devil and for punishment he had to do what he said himself. He had to sail forever. The ship is spotted sometimes by sailors. The doomed crew of the Flying Dutchman gives letters to the crew that are addressed to people that have died hundreds of years ago. The most famous “seeing” of the Flying Dutchman was by king George the IV of England when he was sailing on the coast of Australia. The name the Flying Dutchman is first written by Frederick Marryat, an English writer. He wrote a story about the doomed ship in 1837 in the Dutch city of Terneuzen. It is probably written there because the captain Barend Fockesz was born in the city of Terneuzen. First people thought that it was written there because the ship came from that harbour, but it was impossible to go to the sea with a ship that size at that time. Lots of different writers from Holland and England took over the story Marryat gave and this is considered the story. But it wasn’t the true story. It is probably a tale English sailors told each other to scare each other and to make fun of the Dutch, because it is said that the Dutch would sell their soul to make money. And that the Dutch were so fast in sailing that they were almost flying. VOC The Verenigde Oost Indische Companie is the Dutch name for the Dutch East India Company. That was the trade company in the 17th century that sailed all over the world and made a lot of money. Captain Van der Decken sailed from Holland (mostly from the city of Vlissingen) to India, modern Indonesia and back again. |  A painting of Willem van der Decken |
Pictures Here are some pictures we made of the Flying Dutchman attraction in the Efteling. (and some from Google.)   |  |
Moral of the story
The moral of the story is that you shouldn’t take your goals and ideals too far, or else you’ll never reach it. It also teaches you that you should listen to your wife, take good care of your crew and shouldn’t partake in deals with the devil. The moral of this story was a lot more important back when the VOC still had some meaning. But another version of this story was told after a famous captain sailed to the Dutch Indies in 3 months which caused people to say that he arranged a pact with the devil. This version might’ve been told to keep the competition at bay.
About us
Annejan de Vries, 2nd grade
Sierk Bosma, 2nd grade
Tarik Moumen, 2nd grade
Poya Maleki Seifar, 2nd grade
We went to the Efteling and we had to make a site about it. What we did is that we went into the rollercoaster Flying Dutchman. We took a view pictures and we had a good time. Before we went to the Efteling we already knew that the Flying Dutchman was actually part of the VOC. In the rollercoaster, when we were waiting, we saw beautiful decorations and a lot of details of the VOC and the rollercoaster actually started in a ‘Port’. Of course it wasn’t a real Port but it was a artificial Harbor inside a rollercoaster. As I told you before everything was very detailed and you could see that a lot of work was put into it. There was a story we could follow.
Annejan’s Opinion: cool story, fascinating, like pirates.
‘It’s a cool story and pretty fascinating how the people came up with it and I also like how the put in the pirates.’
Sierk’s Opinion: mysterious story in a cool way, lots of different threads, a lot of different opinion show it happenend.
‘This is a pretty mysterious story that has a cool twist, it has loads of different ways the story ends.’
Tarik’s Opinion: ‘Interesting story about ghost ships.’
Poya’s opinion: ‘Very good story with loads of different twists and I also liked it that there was a movie about it!’
Something extra: We found a video on YouTube which shows the ride of the Flying Dutchman, enjoy!
