Strange seas - the Flying Dutchman

In 1880, the future King George V of England and his brother Prince Albert Victor (incidently a suspect in the Jack the Ripper case) saw a ghost ship while serving in the Royal Navy aboard HMS Bacchante. It appeared around 4 AM off the coast of Australia, glowing with red light with all sails set. The Princes, along with eleven others, momentarily saw the ship off their port bow at a distance of about 200 yards before it vanished as quickly as it appeared. The next day, the seaman who first sighted it fell to his death in an accident. King George V is the most noteworthy person out of hundreds said to have seen the Flying Dutchman.The story behind the Flying Dutchman is unfortunately convoluted and colored by the exaggeration of centuries of sailors. The earliest written accounts describe a ship lost with all hands off the Cape of Good Hope. Another story describes a Captain Fokke, who made a deal with the devil to increase the speed of his ship. Then there's the famous Captain van der Decken, who pushed his ship too hard, cursing at the wind to change direction, promising to push his ship forward until judgement day. It is unknown if all of these accounts describe the same ship, or different ghost ships, but the sightings are always said to herald disaster.

The convoluted story of the Flying Dutchman is just one of many stories about ghost ships. Off the coast of England, near a treacherous area called the Goodwin Sands, a ship wrecked in 1748 appears once every fifty years. Coming from the fog, the ship, called the Lady Luvibund, will appear with full sails set until ultimately making a suicidal turn toward toward land. The story goes that the first mate of the ship, a man named Rivers, snapped during the Captain's wedding party, killed the helmsman and turned the ship toward land where it was smashed with all hands lost. It was seen in 1798, when it almost ran down another ship, the sounds of the party below decks could still be heard. It was seen again in 1848 when it was mistaken for a ship in distress, and again in 1898. Sadly, the ship has not been seen in recent times.