YMMV / The Phantom Ship (1837)

• Hilarious in Hindsight: One of Chapter XXVI's last lines reads "and the treasure was all collected in a deep trench, under a cocoa-nut tree, which they carefully marked with their axe." If this was a modern book, that would be an intentional play on "X" Marks the Spot, but that trope didn't come about until 40 years later with Treasure Island. For what it's worth, the tragic but also incredibly funny escalation of violence in Chapter XXVI would be a perfect fit in pirate fiction.
• Values Dissonance:
  • The Phantom Ship was written by an English man of high society in the late 1830s, so its racism and occasional bouts of misogyny aren't surprising. It may at first seem fair for its day as it opens with what looks like an anti-Jewish stereotype, but it soon follows that Poots is nominally Muslim (his ethnicity goes unaddressed) and his greed stems from trauma, while his half-Arab daughter is lifted up as this amazing person for her beauty, intelligence, courage, and loyalty. Most of the novel is somewhat balanced in how it portrays different nations and religions through individual members thereof, but the illusion shatters the moment people with dark skin appear. The locals at the Cape in South Africa, despite their kindness, are described in horrible words. The exact same thing happens regarding the people of New Guinea. The only black character described sympathetically is the "negro slave" in Chapter XIX. He helps out Philip tremendously and isn't given derisive words, but he dies after five paragraphs and never is addressed by name. He's only the "negro slave", even though he's arguably not a slave anymore after the first paragraph. For comparison, the racism in The Phantom Ship is similar to the one in She.
  • Catholicism is given a number of favorable tidbits, but overall it's the big bad religion that makes everyone worse. For example, the ship going from Tidore to Goa is hit by a storm and all the Catholic seamen on board are too terrified to take proper action. It's the Deist Amine who has to rouse them into actively ensuring their safety. Father Mathias believes that her courage is not of this world and if it's not by God because she's not Catholic, then that means she's in league with the Devil.
  • For a modern audience, it's hard not to read Amine as if she were a child predator in Chapter XXXV. Amine, a guest in his widowed mother's house, specifically befriends the 12-year old Pedro because she needs his hands for a ritual. One day when his mother is away, she tricks him into playing a game with her, which is the ritual. As a good Catholic boy, Pedro is deeply unsettled by Amine's evident use of magic and the fact she makes him partake in it. He pleads multiple times for her to stop and to let him go and she doesn't until he ends the ritual by spilling the ink. Then she gives him presents, forces a promise he won't tell anyone what happened, and prevents him from leaving until his emotions have cooled down. For the next couple of days, she reminds him of his promise and gives him more presents.
• Vanilla Protagonist: Philip Vanderdecken becomes this every time he's with Amine or Krantz, who are mentally stronger, smarter, more in tune with the supernatural, more courageous, and just all around more compelling. It's not that Philip has nothing going for him, but his qualities mostly align with his role as captain in the political and life-at-sea parts of the novel, while the other two shine when it's more about the supernatural. People who pick up a book about the Flying Dutchman do so for the latter and not for politics.
• What Could Have Been: Looking at the impact "The White Wolf of the Hartz Mountains" had, it's tempting to wonder if the storyline about the Accursed Isle could have had its own fame too had it also taken place in one chapter instead of being spread out over Chapters XXIII, XXIV, XXV (setup), XXVI, XXXVIII (core), XXXIX (end). What happens is that when the Utrecht goes down, the money on board is divided among the surviving crew. It brings about all-consuming greed that reduces the survivors down from 86 to 15 before they even reach the isle. Everyone but Philip and Krantz, who aren't interested in the money (and technically protected by their own curses), is killed and the treasure is buried to be collected by the Company later. The two men return later with several Portuguese soldiers who want the money to go home. Out of gratitude, they want Philip and Krantz to have a share, but they refuse again. They've barely turned around to be on their own way when the slaughtering happens again, prompting Philip to dub the isle the Accursed Isle.