The Flying Dutchman Seen from HMS Inconstant, 1881

In 1881 two sons of the Prince of Wales were at sea with the Royal Navy. Prince Albert Victor and Prince George of Wales sailed with the Detached Squadron, the "Flying" Squadron, under Rear-Admiral the Earl of Clanwilliam. Their own ship was HMS Bacchante. Her rudder had been damaged, so the princes were moved to the flagship, HMS Inconstant, while it was repaired. On 9 July the squadron left Port Phillip under sail and passed through Bass Strait. On 10 July it lay nearly becalmed.

Monday, 11 July. 4 a.m. The journal entry opens without ceremony. "At 4 A.M. the Flying Dutchman crossed our bows."

What the watch saw was "a strange red light as of a phantom ship all aglow". Inside that light, "the masts, spars, and sails of a brig 200 yards distant stood out in strong relief as she came up on the port bow." The look-out man on the forecastle reported her. The officer of the watch "clearly saw her" from the bridge. So did the quarterdeck midshipman, who was sent forward at once.

He reached the forecastle. There was "no vestige nor any sign whatever of any material ship" to be seen, "either near or right away to the horizon, the night being clear and the sea calm." "Thirteen persons altogether saw her," the entry records. Then the consorts Tourmaline and Cleopatra, sailing on the starboard bow, "flashed to ask whether we had seen the strange red light."

At 10.45 a.m. the ordinary seaman who had reported the Flying Dutchman that morning fell from the fore topmast crosstrees on to the topgallant forecastle. He "was smashed to atoms." The journal remembers him as "a smart royal yardman". At 4.15 p.m. the ship hove to, and he was buried in the sea. A margin note in the Admiralty logs names a Henry Youle, ordinary seaman, 20 years, killed by a fall from the mast aloft.

Then came the Admiral. "At the next port we came to the Admiral also was smitten down." In Sydney on 22 July, Lord Clanwilliam suffered a fainting fit that resembled paralysis.

No inquiry was held, and the press said nothing in 1881. The story surfaced in 1886, when John Neale Dalton, the princes' tutor, published The Cruise of HMS Bacchante, compiled from their private journals, letters and note-books. Because Dalton edited the material, nobody can say which prince wrote the entry, or whether he was among the thirteen.

Peter Haining wrote in 1974 that the account "was preserved by the Admiralty in London". The researcher David Clarke went looking. He checked the official logbooks at the National Archives and found no mention of the Flying Dutchman at all.

Dalton left the matter open: "whether it was Van Diemen or the Flying Dutchman or who else must remain unknown." The favourite modern answer is a superior mirage, the Fata Morgana. The Bureau of Meteorology has shown how warm air over cool Bass Strait water can lift and float the images of ships, and a Bass Strait example was photographed in 2014. Brian Dunning revisited the legend on Skeptoid. Yet the details sit awkwardly with a mirage. It was dark. The brig was 200 yards away. And it glowed red by its own light.

Retelling by retelling, the story drifted. The ship became Bacchante. The place became the Cape of Good Hope. The time became 4 p.m. The journal became an official log. Prince George went on to reign as George V, and the entry still sits on page 551, under the running head "WE MEET THE FLYING DUTCHMAN."