about 71 of the planet's surface is covered by water the oceans kept life and our continents separated for centuries and the seconds that humans started to master the Seas history changed forever impossible connections and Adventures were suddenly possible and we never looked back we have explored and traveled the waters for centuries already and still about 80 percent remains unknown to us the greatest mystery in the world is right there a step beyond our coasts it's no wonder the maritime history is plagued by fascinating Legends terrifying myths and the most incredible superstitions in the world we
can say without a shadow of a doubt that one of the most infamous Legends of the ocean is the Flying Dutchman like any good legend that is worth telling the hundreds and hundreds of years the story of the Flying Dutchman isn't completely clear or set in stone hardly anyone can risk trying to point out a specific time and place along with the names of the witnesses or more accurately the first victims and yet the numerous reported sightings have enough things in common to allow us to paint a vivid image of what happened that fateful night
on the coast of South Africa sometime during the mid 17th century when the only way to trade with other parts of the world was through long trips along the ocean and the competition was fierce technology and ships weren't what they are today and every Journey could turn out to be absolutely deadly there were no guarantees of survival the stakes were high the dangers were plenty and the superstitions were endless in the midst of these wild circumstances one ship captain stood Out Among the rest his name was Willem van der decken and his mere name inspired
equal amounts of fear and admiration in his crew and rivals the man was said to be notoriously Reckless at sea but capable of pulling off Maneuvers that no other Captain would dare to imitate for this exact reason more than one person dared to accuse him of making deals with the devil in exchange for his success out on the sea maybe they had a point and maybe some of their suspicions were valid but at the end of the line when it came down to it not even the worst of the worst rumors could compare with the
horror of what truly happened in the end the ship came from Amsterdam and it was far from the first time the van the decken attempted that particular Journey but even he had to admit it had never been as difficult that one time he had no idea what it was ever since they set sail things started going wrong and trouble arose from every corner of the ship everything was a struggle but nothing compared to the challenge of doubling over the Cape of Good Hope and the coast of South Africa Vander decken had his ship and crew
fighting against the merciless weather the entire day the night was falling cold and unforgiving the van der decken was unyielding the waters were unruly and the winds were as fast and violent as any of them had ever seen And yet when one of the sailors dared to ask the captain if he had planned to turn around to search for Refuge to do anything at all instead of the suicidal Maneuvers that he was forcing them all to do it said that van der decken replied may I be eternally damned if I do though I should beat
about here till the day of judgment in a few words he swore to the seven winds that he would rather fight those Furious Waters and winds for eternity than give up how could he have known back then that his words would have become his own prophecy his downfall his eternal curse shortly after Vander deck and uttered those words the storm turned even worse if that is even possible the winds and the water ravaged and devastated the ship in its crew it was most likely the most violent attack from Mother Nature to a single ship but
here's the thing After the Storm there were no signs in the entire ocean of Van Der decken and his ship he had vanished a ship was never found the storm took them away forever but that doesn't mean it was never seen again the world searched and waited and hoped desperately for the return of the crew of The Flying Dutchman until everyone that had ever cared for those poor men was already as dead as they were still they became a part of History and any experienced seder that was used to traveling those Waters was aware of
the unfortunate story of that ship that one night it disappeared and this would explain why some people immediately recognized it when the world witnessed the reappearance of the Flying Dutchman or so they thought countless ships continue to travel the world passing by the Cape of Good Hope and many of them unfortunately had to face the incredible challenges and threats before being able to make it home as a result just like the original story of the Flying Dutchman has been disputed and transformed by rumors Skeptics and the unyielding passing of time the first Witnesses of it
have also gone down in history with blurred edges and unreliable details there aren't indisputable names dates and details to it in every version of the story would throw out different names for the captain of the ship different dates different ships but isn't that just another way to say that as time passed the Flying Dutchman claimed more and more victims and left a haunting Mark in Maritime history something stronger than facts something nobody could ever erase commonly the first sighting of the Flying Dutchman is said to have happened during the first half of the 18th century
a European ship in a long and arduous commercial trip stopped by the Cape of Good Hope on its way back home as soon as his business was done the ship resumed its Journey but everything was different after it went by the exact cursed place where Captain Willem Van Der decken once tempted fate above him and the waters below him the journey back home was much more difficult than any other crew anticipated they had to work harder than any of them had ever worked before but it was still within the expectations of regular risks at sea
nobody even suspected something unnatural was chasing after them the ship was close to England already it was painfully close when the storm caught up to them it was all extraordinarily brutal and even more cruel due to the proximity to shore to their homes and to safety but they didn't make it they couldn't make it at least not all of them there were barely enough survivors to tell the tale rescued by ships that were close by after the tragedy struck according to them the violence and the suddenness of the storm was unlike anything any of them
even the most experienced Sailors aboard had ever heard of but the most shocking the most terrifying part and something that every sailor agreed on was that they weren't alone in that storm the story told by the few survivors chilled every listener to the bones they talked first about Anonymous shadow that confused all of them was it coming from the clouds was a part of the hungry waves coming up at them was it something in the middle or something else entirely then the shadow transformed started to take shape into a giant creature line by line corner
by corner and it finally took on its real silhouette it was a ship not just any ship it was the Flying Dutchman it was the worst Omen imaginable what do you do when a ghost ship looms over you a thing made out of something more deadly than the wind and the waves relentlessly attacking you you try to hide you pray for your life you grasp your most beloved amulets and then nothing just when it seemed The Flying Dutchman was about to crash against them the vision cleared and the silhouette vanished but the job was done
their ship was marked by the visit of the Flying Dutchman [Music] since that moment there was nothing they could do but to try and save themselves the ship was doomed their ship was rocking wildly on the waters there wasn't a safe spot on the ship or any hope to make it out of that chaos the salt and the devilishly fast winds were hitting the faces of the sailors as they were thrown from one end of the ship to the other crashing against each other crushed by their equipment and thrown overboard it was a cacophony of
desperate cries agonizing screams and the overpowering Roaring of the waters dragging them around like a ragdoll it was something insane for the sailors something worse than any nightmare something that defied everything they used to think was possible for ships and then before anyone had a chance to forget the image of the Flying Dutchman coming over to send them directly to hell a ship started to sink going down into the ocean the first of the many victims to come for as long as people started to fear the legend of the Flying Dutchman they also started to
come up with explanations and ways to dismiss it some Sailors superstitious as the grand majority of them were acted respectfully and fearful of the Flying Dutchman they embrace the Legends they protected themselves as well as they could against the bad luck and bad Omens and they all fear the day that they could cross paths with the worst Omen the ocean had ever known the Skeptics really were more commonly found on land hiding behind books and desks and not as experienced as anyone that had ever claimed to witness The Flying Dutchman and lived to tell the
tale those skeptical people talked about optical illusions mirages and the way the light hit the waves out on the sea those people had no idea what they were talking about or of the dangers they could face if they ever found themselves in the face of the so-called optical illusion Through The Years there were many more tragic losses in the sea and of course not all of them could be attributed to the Flying Dutchman but its lingering presence never left the generation of sailors that had no option but to go around the Cape of Good Hope
like The Bold and foolishly proud Captain Van Der deck and once tried to do the ocean was a mostly unknown enemy and there were very well-known Rivals also Crossing those Waters Pirates different countries and business enterprises and then there were sicknesses diseases an ailments that attacked the sailors unexpectedly and could take down the entire crew before they ever landed on their destination storms hurricanes and extraordinary threats from Mother Nature were always common and would always remain but there was nothing nothing like the visits from The Flying Dutchman the ship captains the sailors and even the
style of the ships changed and improved but the legend of the Flying Dutchman was always in the back of their minds whenever they passed by that Infamous spot in the coast of South Africa one of the worst Parts according to the rare survivors and the old Sailors that kept the old myths alive was the fact that not every case was exactly the same it seemed even as Captain of a ghost ship Van Der decken remained courageous defiant and wilder than any other sailor in the ocean before I conclude this story I just want to say
thank you for choosing to watch this video and I hope you enjoy my narration if you are please hit that like button and if you don't already subscribe to my channel also those of you that have been kind enough to support me on my new patreon account were able to get early access to the audio of this story and free prior to my Youtube upload I have a starting tier of just three dollars per month for Early Access and nine dollars per month exclusive content accessed here where you not only get access to behind the
scenes content but also an exclusive Tales of high strangeness pin also I must just take a brief moment to announce we have launched a new merch store on our website daredevil.com we are doing a limited run on this rip Mr Sinister shirt and you can also get these super comfortable bellarine canvas hoodies I wear in my videos we'll have more merch launching soon a fellow Dutch ship passed one night just past the exact place where the Flying Dutchman was cursed for eternity this time it was an eerily cold and perfectly still night at first there
was nothing at all that would suggest tragedy was about to strike but then in the middle of that quiet night and impossibly Tranquil Waters they saw it it was undeniably the Flying Dutchman he began as a hazy silhouette in the distance but as it moved closer and closer it looked more and more real at the same time that it felt like a nightmare all the sailors thought they were seeing things going crazy hallucinating but if they all saw it it had to be real the thing is the Flying Dutchman was sailing smoothly over the waters
steady with its sales full even though there was no wind and moving forward without making the slightest Ripple on the surface of the water by now all the sailors knew the legend they knew about the apocalyptic storms and hurricanes that followed the Flying Dutchman they knew about ships crashing against the Rocks getting helplessly destroyed despite the experienced captain and crew all just an hour after watching The Phantom of The Flying Dutchman passing by they knew the terrible stories about a ship's crew catching sight of the Flying Dutchman and in a matter of minutes the first
of them starting to throw up until the sickness spread like wildfire on the ship until all the men on that ship were being consumed by a mysterious illness brought from Beyond by the ghost of that Flying Dutchman this time the curse of the Flying Dutchman took a new shape and it consumed that ship through massive Hysteria despite the calm and peaceful night around them the crews started to lose their minds this time the storms the lightning and thunder were happening inside their own minds the captain of the ship was completely shocked to see a large
group of men experienced and reliable sailors their minds go mad with desperation and turn completely wild in their desire to live and Escape The Omen coming closer and closer to them the captain lost all control over his crew the men started acting like frightened animals they screamed and cried they hid in the corners and they killed themselves before the Flying Dutchman could get the chance they jumped on the lifeboats determined to reach the shore alive and get as far from their cursed ship as possible before it was too late and when the chaos was too
much many of them simply chose to jump off the ship jump blindly and hope for the best and even though many of them died in the process they were relieved by the brief belief that they saved themselves they died on their own terms they escaped The Flying Dutchman they didn't get that this hysteria was part of the curse they didn't get it until it was too late only a few Sailors were still fighting the madness eating alive their minds when they saw what happened next on the ship the captain was Furious and barely hiding how
terrified he was he was shouting orders desperately trying to grasp control back from a hopeless situation they said at the very last moment he yelled look it's gone it's not real and effectively when he turned around to watch the place where the Flying Dutchman had been approaching them The Horizon was completely clear there was no sign of their Phantom ship said that the shock of it all killed him some said that the captain like many others before him and after him was a victim of the supernatural power of the Flying Dutchman the worst possible Omen
at sea the ghost of a proud captain and a cursed ship the most frightening legend in the ocean the Phantom that would sail those waters for eternity and take as many innocent ships down as it could this story was written by Danny Rahel Nieto and narrated by me James devrel thank you for watching this video again if you enjoyed it please don't forget to hit the like button and if you don't already subscribe to my channel I have just launched the podcast version of this YouTube channel on all major podcast platforms so don't forget to
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