Prince George Sees the Flying Dutchman

Of all the ghost stories told in the forecastle, none traveled farther than the Flying Dutchman. In most tellings, a Dutch captain swore he would round the Cape of Good Hope if it took him until doomsday, and he has been beating against the wind off the Cape ever since, never able to make port. To sight his ship was the worst of omens.

In 1881, two of Queen Victoria’s grandsons, Prince Albert Victor, 17, and Prince George, 16, were sailing around the world as naval cadets with the Royal Navy’s Detached Squadron. Their own ship, HMS Bacchante, was laid up at Melbourne with a damaged rudder, so they made the passage to Sydney in the flagship, HMS Inconstant. The princes’ journal, published in 1886, records what happened before dawn on July 11: “At 4 A.M. the Flying Dutchman crossed our bows. A strange red light as of a phantom ship all aglow, in the midst of which light the masts, spars, and sails of a brig 200 yards distant stood out in strong relief.” The quarterdeck midshipman was sent forward at once, but by the time he reached the forecastle there was no ship anywhere, though the night was clear and the sea calm. Thirteen men saw her, and two other ships of the squadron signaled to ask about the strange red light. At 10:45 that morning, the young seaman who had first reported her fell from the fore topmast crosstrees and was killed.

Prince George became King George V in 1910. The ballad The Flying Dutchman keeps to the old geography, with the captain doomed to the waters around the Cape: “He tries in vain his oath to keep to anchor in Table Bay.” The princes met him off the coast of Australia, more than six thousand miles to the east, which says something about how far sailors had carried the legend.