Flying Dutchman

“ With all element of terror in it extinguished by time, it is a sight to recall with a sailor's fondness; for indeed the Dutchman was a fine ship, very tall, with port-lids painted red inside, so that with the guns projecting from them, in two tiers, the aspect was that of rows of crimson, wolfish jaws, every beast with his tongue out ”

“ If we Americans, who after all, are homeopathic preparations of Holland stock, can laugh at the Dutch, and call them human beavers, and hint that their country may float off any day at high tide, we can also feel proud, and say they have proved themselves heroes, and that their country will not float off while there is a Dutchman left to grapple it.
There are said to be at least ninety-nine hundred largo windmills in Holland, with sails ranging from eighty to one hundred and twenty feet long. They are employed in sawing timber, beating hemp, grinding, and many other kinds of work ”

“ The first up, on clearing the scarp, have their eyes upon the Dutchman. His behaviour might cause them surprise, if they could not account for it. As said, the beacon is upon the higher of the two peaks, some two hundred yards beyond the clift’s brow. He is beside it, and apparently beside himself. Dancing over the ground, he makes grotesque gesticulations, tossing his arms about, and waving his hat overhead—all the while shouting as if to some vessel close at hand—calling in rapid repetition:
“Ship, Ahoy! Ahoy!”
Looking they can see no ship, nor craft of any kind. ”

“ It was now dark, and the Dutch ship anchored within a mile of us. I ordered to look out sharp in the morning; that so soon as the Dutchman began to move we might be ready to follow him; for I intended to make him my pilot. In the morning at half an hour after 5 we weighed, the Dutchman being under sail before; and we stood directly after him. At 8, having but little wind, I sent my boat aboard of him to see what news he had brought from Europe. Soon after we spied a ship coming from the east, plying on a wind to speak with us, and showing English colours. ”

“ After this, I went on shore myself with Captain Merlotte, and some of the men whom I could trust; and we found it true as the Dutchman had related. The Dutchman gave us a long history of his adventures, and how he came to be left there by a ship he came in from Europe, which, he running up into the country for sport with three more of his comrades, went away without them, and left them among the natives, who, however, used them extremely well; and that now he served them for an interpreter and a broker, to bargain for them with the European ships for provisions. ”

“ Here in Java the Dutch have been longer settled than the English in India; they more often remain in the island, and the effect of course is more marked from generation to generation. The Dutchman is a placid, easy-going creature, even in his native Holland, except when roused by some great crisis, like a Spanish invasion, and then he fights with a courage which has given him a proud name in history. But ordinarily he is of a calm and even temper, and likes to sit quietly and survey his broad acres, and smoke his pipe in blissful content with himself and all the world beside. ”

“ A Dutchman with his variegated goods and chattels is an odd sight. I have noticed him and his wife, with four, six, eight, and even ten children, hardly more than a year between their ages, driving their poultry, pigs, and cattle on board the boat, and, after distributing themselves as pilots, draggers, feeders, cooks, cleaners, and general directors, glide off on the canals as if they were sailing on purple seas to the Islands of the Blessed.
The foundations of Amsterdam no longer rest on herring bones. ”

“ A stiver, or five Dutch cents, equal to less than two of our cents, is small enough. There are a great many poor people in Amsterdam who live entirely in cellars. As you have seen, a great many families live in vessels, keeping a pig, hens, and ducks on board, and sometimes even have a little garden on deck. When the Dutchman gets married and sets up in life, he obtains a small boat of from one to three tons, and goes to housekeeping on board. If they prosper, they buy a bigger craft ”

“ He can do nothing but wait for fair weather, and goes below, leaving his steersman to keep watch. The lad drops asleep, singing of his home, and through the darkness the gloomy vessel of the Dutchman is seen approaching with its blood-red sails. The Dutchman anchors his ship close to the Norwegian barque, and steps ashore. Seven years have passed since he last set foot upon earth, and he comes once more in search of a true woman who will sacrifice herself for his salvation, for this alone can free him from the curse under which he suffers. ”

“ Such is the effect of early prejudices, that, under the muzle of the sun, a Dutchman cannot exist without snuffing the putrid exhalations from stagnant water, to which they have been accustomed from their infancy. ”

“ Why, a Dutchman never has his spree out! You take and hail a man before the mast, able seaman or what not, when he’s paid off of a cruise—and mind ye, he doesn’t engage for a long spell, doesn’t Mynheer—and he’ll tow you into dry dock, and set you down to your grub, and blow you out with schnaps as if he was a admiral. ”

“ About forty or fifty years hence, travellers in this part of the world will come across bands of white-haired and silver-bearded men in strange garbs of ox and mule skin patches, and armed with obsolete weapons, wandering about in pursuit of phantasmal beings to be known in future legends as land Flying Dutchmen. ”

“ He asked me if I had ever seen the Dutchman, and on my answering "No," he [84] said that the usual notion among sailors was that there is but one vessel sailing the seas with the curse of Heaven upon her, but that that was a mistake, as it was an error in the same way to suppose that this ocean from Agulhas round to the Mozambique was the only place in which the Phantom was to be met.
"There's a ship," said he, "after the pattern of this here Dutchman, to be found in the Baltic. She always brings heavy weather, and there's small chance afterwards for any craft that sights her." ”

“ The air of the sea is life-giving, bracing, oxydized; the air inland is soft, relaxing, and warm. In the same way there are two Hollands in every Dutchman: there is the man of the polder, heavy, pale, phlegmatic, slow, patient himself, and trying to the patience of others, and there is the man of the dune, of the harbor, the shore, the sea, who is tenacious, seasoned, persevering, sunburned, daring. ”

“ It has been observed by some travellers, that the Dutch are much given to a tremulous motion of the head. I saw no instance of this national trait except, where I expected to find it, among old and paralytic persons. The practice of bowing is not confined to the Dutchman, though adduced against him as a sort of blemish by every Englishman who extends his rambles no farther than Holland: throughout Germany the same courtesy is displayed, and even among the common Russian boors the practice of exchanging bows is quite common. ”

“ A sort of simple fellow, the Dutchman already mentioned—who was also much played upon,—shared with me the meaner drudgery, and had more than half of the spleen which the captain and mate must needs spend upon somebody. Indeed, the poor Dutchman, who, although a harmless creature, was a wretched specimen of humanity, came well-nigh being killed by their cruelty ”

“ Although often akin to the English, the Dutch character differs from it very noticeably in the matter of precision. The Englishman has little precision; the Dutchman has too much. He bends everything to it. He has at its dictates divided his whole country into parellelograms. Even the rushes in his swamps are governed by the same law. The carelessness of nature is offensive to him; he moulds and trains on every hand, as one may see on the railway journey to The Hague. Trees he endures only so long as they are obedient and equidistant: he likes them in avenues or straight lines ”

“ The sea-breeze freshened and brought up a schooner-rigged boat very fast. We had been at work twenty-four hours and were heartily tired; our slaves could work no longer, so we prepared for the Hollanders; they were afraid to close upon us and commenced firing at a distance. This was just what we wanted; we had guns as well as they, and by keeping up the fight until dark, we felt sure of escape. The Dutchmen, however, knew this too, and kept closing gradually upon us; and when they saw our prahus bailing out water and blood, they knew we were suffering and cheered like devils. ”

“ The Dutchman assured us that he had none.
“We will soon see for ourselves!” said the captain, and taking with him the pilot and four sailors, he went on board of the merchantman. In half an hour he called out to the schooner to come alongside. This was done, and the Dutchman was again sent on board of his vessel, where he was greeted with a blow from the flat of a sword that stretched him on the deck. The inquiries concerning the money now began afresh, accompanied by the threats of burning both ship and crew, if money should actually 24 be found on board. ”

“ Then all New Amsterdam gathered at the Battery and watched for wide sails over a wide ship—a ship almost as wide as long, but in all dimensions so small that we of today would think it no small adventure to make a mere coasting voyage on her. Out of the ship would come arrivals from Holland in wide breeches and noble Dutch hats, solid as the Dutch nation itself. ”

“ The Dutch are a less savage people than they were, but in the age to which this ship's company belonged they were the most inhuman people in Europe, perhaps in the world, and such were the barbarities they were guilty of, that the passage of two centuries—and it would be the same if it were the passage of two hundred centuries—leaves their crimes as fresh and smoking to God as the blood of their victims at the time of their being done to death. ”

“ In these early times the Dutch were not unworthy rivals of the English. After they had succeeded in throwing off the Spanish yoke and achieved their independence, they became one of the most formidable of maritime powers. In the course of another century Holland possessed more colonies, and had a larger share of the carrying trade of the world than Britain. It was natural therefore that the Dutch republic should take an interest in the North-west passage; and the Dutch sailors, by their enterprise and bravery, were among the first to point the way to Arctic discovery. ”

“ Dutchman at the Cape, whose ancestors have been “avoirdupoising” there for two centuries, is a better all-round, and very round man, than is his compatriot in race at home among the canals and tulip gardens of Holland. ”

“ Throughout the opera it is made plain that the whole world knows the Dutchman story: mariners shiver when they think of meeting him; children are scared when they are told of him. Yet when the very ship described in the "old ballad," sung in the second act, sails into the fiord with its blood-red sails and black masts, no one evinces the faintest astonishment. Daland has the Dutchman's picture at home; he sees the ship before his eyes; but in a matter-of-fact manner he asks him who he is. Daland's sailors are called on deck to set sail, and pay no attention to so weird a craft. ”

“ Every thing in Holland seems typified by one of their own drawbridges, which rises as a boat approaches, by invisible agency, and then remains patiently aloft, till a sufficiency of passengers arrives to restore it to its place, and Dutch gravity seems the grand centre of all prosperity. ”

“ After all, as if to employ every possible means to mollify their invaders, the men, women, and children presented themselves in the most humble postures, carrying branches of palm in token of peace and submission, bringing plenty of provisions of all kinds, and even pointing to their women, giving the Dutch to understand by signs that these were entirely at their disposal, and that they might carry as many of them on board ship as they thought proper. ”

“ The Dutch had only one flag left flying,—Van Tromp killed,—all going against them! Again they sought refuge behind the sandbanks on the coasts of their country, whither the victors followed, as closely as their knowledge of the navigation would permit. In the pursuit of the flying foe, the lightest of the English ships took the most prominent part. The Dutch admiral, perceiving that they were only frigates that pursued him, turned upon them, but heavier ships coming up, he was not permitted to sink his tenacious tormentors, but had his own ship captured before he reached the Texel. ”

“ Of all the great European seaports, no one perhaps is less favourably situated. But the Dutchmen, habituated to get the better of difficulties, were the last people in the world to resign themselves to commercial extinction and straitened circumstances. Frugal as they are by habit and temperament, they have seldom come to shipwreck through penny wisdom. They began by cutting the great ship-canal which runs parallel to the two seas, from the Ij to the Helder, through the whole length of the province of North Holland. ”

“ In this boat life the women do all the domestic offices, and garnish their cabins with tulips, hyacinths, and dahlias ― for which the Dutch in all grades of society have an unconquerable passion ― giving an appearance of refinement and comfort to what would otherwise seem a narrow, sordid, and dreary existence. All the members of the family, without regard to age or sex, take part in the management of their floating dwelling. ”