Item  #  Dutchman 20

Flying Dutchman 20"

• Overall dimensions: 20" H x 4" W x 18" L (1:176 scale).  2 Lbs.
• Built with rare, high quality woods such as cherry, birch, maple and rosewood.
• Amazing details! Perfectly taught rigging with varied thread color and thickness.
• Dusted black/grey sails and wood for the real ghost like feeling!
• Accurate cannons and metal anchors.
• Rests perfectly on a large wood base.
• Requires hundreds of hours to build from scratch (not from a model kit) by our master artisans.
• To build this ship, extensive research was done using various sources such as the original plans, drawings, paintings and pictures.

On the third of August, 1942, H.M.S. Jubilee was on the way to the Royal Navy base at Simonstown, near Cape Town. At 9 p.m., a phantom sailing ship was seen. The second officer, Davies, was in charge of the watch. Sharing this duty was the third officer, Nicholas Monsarrat, author of The Cruel Sea. Monsarrat signalled to the strange ship, but there was no response. Davies recorded in the log that a schooner, of a class that he did not recognise, was moving under full sail, even though there was no wind. The Jubilee had to change course, to avoid a collision. During the war, Davies' superiors would have been in no mood for nonsense, and he must have had to weigh that against the dangers, especially in wartime, of not recording the strange things that he saw. In an interview, Monsarrat admitted that the sighting inspired him to write his novel The Master Mariner.

According to Admiral Karl Doenitz, U Boat crews logged sightings of the Flying Dutchman, off the Cape Peninsula. For most or all of these crews, it proved to be a terrible omen. The ghostly East Indiaman was also seen at Muizenberg, in 1939. On a calm day in 1941, a crowd at Glencairn beach saw a ship with wind-filled sails, but it vanished just as it was about to crash onto the rocks. During the war years, there was plenty of room for bad omens.

The Flying Dutchman is the most famous of South Africa's hauntings, inspiring Wagner's opera Der Fliegende Hollander. Wagner, however, calls the captain himself "The Flying Dutchman". The air miles club of Royal Dutch Airlines (KLM) is also, predictably, called "The Flying Dutchman". A popular class of yacht is called "Flying Dutchman". The ghost ship provides the name for traditional English pubs, and even a great American baseball star, Honus Wagner, was nicknamed "The Flying Dutchman". You may have seen the old movie Pandora and the Flying Dutchman, starring Ava Gardner.

For centuries, the Flying Dutchman has inspired novelists. Nicholas Monsarrat has already been mentioned. Captain Frederick Marryat, most famous for his classic novels The Children Of The New Forest and Mister Midshipman Easy, was also inspired to write The Phantom Ship. Like Monsarrat, Marryat wrote his fiction after experiencing the real ghost ship. In fact, it has been suggested that Captain Marryat invented the Van der Decken character. This is not possible, however. In any case, Marryat called his fictional captain Philip Vanderdecken, not Hendrick van der Decken.

Other famous authors inspired by the legend include Washington Irving (who called the captain Ramhout van Dam) and Sir Walter Scott. Recent novels include Castaways Of The Flying Dutchman, by Brian Jacques, and Sherlock Holmes And The Ghost Of The Flying Dutchman, by Steven Fullenkamp.

Spectral ships in other parts of the world are sometimes generically called "The Flying Dutchman", but the one that still tries to round the Cape of Good Hope is the original.