The Flying Dutchman Seen by Prince George, Later George V (1881)

In 1881 a British naval squadron was cruising the world. Serving aboard as midshipmen were two teenage princes, Albert Victor and George of Wales. George would one day be King George V. Their tutor and chaplain, the Rev. John Neale Dalton, would later edit their journals for publication.

The squadron counted Inconstant, flagship of Rear-Admiral the Earl of Clanwilliam, with Bacchante, Cleopatra, Carysfort and Tourmaline. In May 1881 a storm badly damaged Bacchante's rudder. Several accounts say the princes moved temporarily to Inconstant. Others keep them aboard Bacchante. The sources still disagree.

11 July 1881. The squadron was at sea between Melbourne and Sydney, usually placed in Bass Strait. It was 4 a.m., the end of the middle watch. A southern winter night, with dawn still hours away.

A lookout reported a ship. The princes' journal describes what came next: "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 as she came up on the port bow." The officer of the watch clearly saw her from the bridge. So did the quarterdeck midshipman. He was sent forward at once to the forecastle. When he arrived, there was no sign of any material ship. Not near. Not right away to the horizon. The night was clear. The sea was calm.

"Thirteen persons altogether saw her." They were not the only ones. Tourmaline and Cleopatra, sailing on the starboard bow, flashed to ask whether they had seen the strange red light.

At 10.45 that morning, the ordinary seaman who had reported the Flying Dutchman fell from the foretopmast crosstrees on to the topgallant forecastle. The journal says he was "smashed to atoms." A margin note in an official logbook, found by David Clarke, names him as Henry Youle, ordinary seaman, 20 years, killed by a fall from the mast aloft. He was buried at sea.

No formal inquiry is known. The account reached the public in 1886, in The Cruise of Her Majesty's Ship "Bacchante" 1879-1882, edited by Dalton. In Ghosts (1974), Peter Haining claimed the log "was preserved by the Admiralty in London" with the prince's account.

Clarke checked. The official log at the National Archives in Kew, ADM 53/11664, records the seaman's death. It makes no mention of the Flying Dutchman or the red light. The popular belief that the phantom is written into the official ship's log seems to come from confusing the princes' private journal with the Admiralty record.

Tim Maltin, Country Life and others point to a superior mirage, Fata Morgana or "looming". Layers of air at different temperatures bend light, making distant ships look raised, stretched, nearer than they are, or floating. Nobody accuses the princes, Dalton or the crew of inventing the story. The criticism is aimed at its retellings: the wrong year of 1880, the confusion between Bacchante and Inconstant, and curse details added along the way.

The link between the seaman's death and the legend that the Dutchman brings bad luck belongs mostly to the commentators, and only partly to the journal. Still, the story endures. Through George V, it became the royal sighting, and the best-known "official" sighting of the Flying Dutchman.