History Main / FlyingDutchman

The Flying Dutchman variant first popped up in the seventeenth century, and was said to be an old sailing superstition. Sources differ on whether "Flying Dutchman" was the name of the ship or a nickname for her captain, who is usually named "Hendrick van der Decken" or something close to that. The most common form of this story is that the ship was trying to get around the Cape of Good Hope, a notoriously stormy and risky crossing for sailing vessels, and was caught in a gale; at this point, Captain van der Decken cursed God and vowed that he ''would'' round of the Cape even if it took him until Judgement Day, earning himself the curse that he shall do precisely that. The ship is then said to be stuck eternally trying to make the trip, sometimes appearing to other vessels as a GhostShip to either run them down, try to leave messages to people long dead, or just generally portend doom.

The Flying Dutchman variant first popped up in the seventeenth century, and was said to be an old sailing superstition. Sources differ on whether "Flying Dutchman" was the name of the ship or a nickname for her captain, who is usually named "Hendrick van der Decken" or something close to that. The most common form of this story is that the ship was trying to get around the Cape of Good Hope, a notoriously stormy and risky crossing for sailing vessels, and was caught in a gale; at this point, Captain van der Decken cursed God and vowed that he ''would'' round of the Cape even if it took him until Judgement Day, earning himself the curse that he shall do precisely that. The ship is then said to be stuck eternally trying to make the trip, sometimes appearing to other vessels to either run them down, try to leave messages to people long dead, or just generally portend doom.

* [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wandering_Jew The Wandering Jew]] (sometimes instead a Roman), usually named Ahasuerus, mocked Jesus on the way to the cross and is forced to [[WalkingTheEarth wander the earth]] until the [[TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt second coming]].

Many lands and peoples have legends of a man who is BarredFromTheAfterlife and cursed to go WalkingTheEarth (or sailing or flying or...) [[WhoWantsToLiveForever forever]]. Most versions of this fall into one of two types: the ''Flying Dutchman'', cursed to sail the seas, and the Wandering Jew, forced to wander the earth.

The ''Flying Dutchman'' variant first popped up in the seventeenth century, and was said to be an old sailing superstition. Sources differ on whether "Flying Dutchman" was the name of the ship or a nickname for her captain, who is usually named "Hendrick van der Decken" or something close to that. The most common form of this story is that the ship was trying to get around the Cape of Good Hope, a notoriously stormy and risky crossing for sailing vessels, and was caught in a gale; at this point, Captain van der Decken cursed God and vowed that he ''would'' round of the Cape even if it took him until Judgement Day, earning himself the curse that he shall do precisely that. The ship is then said to be stuck eternally trying to make the trip, sometimes appearing to other vessels to either run them down, try to leave messages to people long dead, or just generally portend doom.

* ''Art/ShippingLeviathanArkOfApocalypse'' is a giant decrepit monstrosity built from the ground up with a SkeletonMotif and manned by a SkeletonCrew of monsters.

* In Music/RichardWagner's adaptation of the legend, the opera ''[[Theatre/TheFlyingDutchman Der fliegende Holländer]]'', the title character can be saved by ThePowerOfLove coming from the local weird girl. Wagner lifted the plot from Heinrich Heine's ''Aus den Memoiren des Herrn von Schnabelewopski'' (From the memoirs of Mr. Schnabelewopski, 1838), where there is an at the time entirely fictional play the protagonist sees in Amsterdam. He helpfully ends up the summary: "The moral of the play for women is to watch out '''not''' to marry a Flying Dutchman; and we men see from this play that women in the best case cause us to perish."

* The Creator/PeterDavison ''Series/DoctorWho'' storyline ''Mawdryn Undead'' involved a band of alien scientists mutated into horrible pain-wracked forms and unable to die. The scientists sabotaged the TARDIS, leaving it stuck in orbit around the Earth and unable to travel forward or backward in time without killing Nyssa and Tegan, unless the Doctor agreed to sacrifice his life energy to help them end their wretched existence, at the cost of his ability to regenerate. Luckily, [[spoiler: there are two Brigadiers wandering around, one from the past and one from the (then) present (it's a long story), and when they meet, they touch hands, causing a discharge of temporal energy at precisely the right instant, which ends the scientists' immortality, and allows the Doctor to remain a Time Lord]].

* ''Series/{{Andromeda}}'' episode "The Mathematics of Tears" is heavily based on The Flying Dutchman, although the Pax Magellanic's crew are [[spoiler:androids controlled by a rogue AI, not cursed humans]]. The Pax Magellanic draws the parallel herself, and plays the opera music frequently, considering it her theme song.

* ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'': The Doctor once referred to ''Voyager'' as "The Voyage of the Damned." The episode ''Night'' implies that life on ''Voyager'' was beginning to feel like this trope for Captain Janeway, as well.
* ''Series/BabylonFive'': At the end of "Babylon Squared", Sinclair compares to the situation (a previous station, Babylon 4, has begun drifting back and forth through time) to the Flying Dutchman.

'''Sinclair:''' [[ForeShadowing No.]]

** In the final scene of "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E54TheOdysseyOfFlight33 The Odyssey of Flight 33]]", it appears that Flight 33 is destined to become a time traveling Flying Dutchman as it is uncertain whether its next attempt to return to 1961 will be successful, especially since its fuel is running low.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E67TheArrival The Arrival]]", Flight 107 mysteriously disappeared in a thick fog in the early 1940s. In his closing narration, Rod Serling describes it as an airborne Flying Dutchman.
** In the closing narration of "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS4E108DeathShip Death Ship]]", Rod Serling refers to the spaceship E-89, whose crew is [[GroundhogDayLoop destined to relive the same few hours over and over again]], as a latter day Flying Dutchman.

* In ''WebComic/SluggyFreelance'', in "Mohkadun", the KingOfGods of Mohkadun curses the [[TheStarscream traitorous]] god [[spoiler: Symachus]] to lose his powers and become blind and feeble and live either forever or at least a long time. [[spoiler: This backfires when Symachus uses all his time to TakeALevelInBadass and become an immortal lich who manipulates the entire course of history to get revenge -- which is also why it's hard to say whether he was cursed with immortality or long age in the first place, because maybe he just continuing in undeath.]]

* The Creator/MikeResnick short story ''[[LongTitle How I Wrote the New Testament, Ushered in the Renaissance, and Birdied the 17th Hole at Pebble Beach]]'' goes for a humorous take on the story.

* ''Manga/TheAncientMagusBride'' has the Biblical Wandering Jew, usually referred to as Cartaphilus in-story (though [[DoNotCallMePaul he really doesn't like being called that]] and would prefer to be called Josef), who serves as the BigBad for the initial stages of the story. His main goal is to create a body for himself that feels no pain, and he doesn't care who or what has to pay the price to obtain it. [[spoiler: Eventually, it is revealed that the current incarnation of Cartaphilus came to be when a young gravedigger named Josef fused with the original Cartaphilus]].

* The ''Fonferrus'' is this in ''VideoGame/PillarsOfEternity2Deadfire.'' Its captain was a Paladin of Old Vaillia who refused to break her oath to uphold the old nation when it fell apart. Defeating her for good and stealing the ship is a possible resolution of the Watcher sides with the Principi sen Patrena (specifically, the new blood).

* ''LightNovel/FateRequiem'' so far has three cursed wanderers.

* ''Manga/TsubasaReservoirChronicle'' and ''Manga/XxxHolic'': [[spoiler:Syaoran Li and his "progeny" Watanuki]] are men without/outside ''the time-space continuum'' due to a magician creating clones of [[spoiler:Li and his girlfriend Sakura]] that eventually became [[spoiler:''[[MindScrew Li's own parents]]'']]. When [[spoiler:Li]] left his "home" dimension (where his parents lived) his absence created [[spoiler:Watanuki]], who subconsciously knew he shouldn't be alive. Eventually they defeated the magician but that didn't resolve the fact that [[spoiler:Li and Watanuki]] shouldn't even exist. In the end, they paid a price to be able to live: [[spoiler:Li]] would dimension-hop until he found a world where he, [[spoiler:Sakura]], and the clones could live while [[spoiler:Watanuki]] would remain in [[TheLittleShopThatWasntThereYesterday a small but interdimensional space]] until [[spoiler:[[DeadForReal Yuuko]]]] returned -- unlike most of the examples their fates are presented as ''choices'' rather then punishments or unfortunate side-effects. At least they'll be able to visit each other/have visitors often, respectively.

* The [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_Dutchman Flying Dutchman]] was a ship captained by Hendrik van der Decken. Hendrik cursed God while trying to sail through the Cape of Good Hope, vowing that he would succeed even if it took him until Judgment Day. [[BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor He did]]. And then was forced to sail the seas forever.
* ''Literature/FlyingDutch'': Subverted. The Flying Dutchman and his crew had accidentally drunk some elixir which gave them immortality, but also the most outrageous body odor for all but one month in every seven years. In the book, Wagner is said to have been given direct inspiration from the captain of the crew... as well as a weird little psychological hang-up causing him to laugh maniacally upon hearing the name "Philip II of Spain."

The Wandering Jew story can be traced to medieval Christianity -- in particular, a reference to [[http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=matthew%2016:28&version=KJV Matthew 16:28,]] wherein Jesus states that some of the people listening to him speak would not die prior to Jesus "coming in his kingdom", which some believe to be a reference to the SecondComing. Since many ordinary lifespans had passed between Jesus' speech and the time of its progenitors, [[OffscreenInertia the myth arose]] that at least one of those ancient audience members had been for some reason sentenced to immortality.

* ''LightNovel/{{Slayers}} TRY'' has an episode about a ghost ship that is cursed to wander the seas because the captain neglected his duties in favor of his hobby: collecting vases.
* The Flying Dutchman appears in ''Manga/OnePiece'' with a reversal of the legend: Instead of being unable to set foot on land again, the captain (who is a [[FishPerson fishman]]) can never swim again due to eating a Devil Fruit. Said captain is actually a descendant of the original captain from the legend, who apparently wasn't quite as immortal as the legend would say.

* Captain Fate in the Franchise/MarvelUniverse. Fate betrayed his captain Maura Hawke, selling her to a satyr in exchange for untold riches. Maura was furious to learn that her crew had truly left her, and she cursed them all to never reach port, never enjoy their new found wealth, and to sail on forever, beyond time, beyond death. The ''Serpent's Crown'' lifted off the water into the sky, sailing the space winds for eternity it seemed. Fate and his crew became {{Space Pirate}}s, occasionally returning to Earth to act as {{Sky Pirate}}s.
* The ''ComicBook/SilverSurfer'' actually battled the Flying Dutchman's ghostly captain in one [[UsefulNotes/TheSilverAgeOfComicBooks Silver Age]] story, and the captain has since appeared once or twice to bedevil Comicbook/TheAvengers among others.
* ComicBook/DisneyDucksComicUniverse:

* The eponymous characters of the Creator/DianaWynneJones novel ''Literature/TheHomewardBounders'', one of whom is the actual Wandering Jew (and another is the actual Flying Dutchman).

** It's also implied that the Wandering Jew's UrExample is the Literature/BookOfGenesis's Cain, with the book of Genesis noting that after murdering Abel, Cain says to God "Behold, thou hast driven me out this day from the face of the earth; and from thy face I shall be hid; and I shall be a fugitive and a vagabond in the earth; and it shall come to pass that every one that findeth me shall slay me" (Gen. 4:14). Afterwards, Cain settled in the now-lost land of Nod, whose name means "wandering exile" in Hebrew. Cain's roaming the earth could also be possibly interpreted as living a nomadic life.

* ''The Soldier and Death'', a Russian folk tale told in the first episode of ''Series/TheStoryteller'', ends with the eponymous soldier being unable to enter either heaven or hell, and thus condemned to walking the earth forever. To the story's credit, mentioning this doesn't actually give away anything that makes it interesting.

* The mysterious Pokémon Trainer [[VideoGame/PokemonXandY AZ]]. [[spoiler:He was once the king of Kalos from 3000 years ago. His immortally was caused by using the ultimate weapon to bring his [[OurFairiesAreDifferent Floette]] back to life and to end the war that killed his Floette in the first place, killing thousands in the process. When it found out what its trainer had done, it left him. He had been wandering Kalos searching for it ever since.]]
* While there are a number of [[CompleteImmortality immortals]] in ''VideoGame/LostOdyssey'' the one who most embodies this trope is [[TheHero Kaim Argonar]]. For a thousand years, he has [[WanderingTheEarth wandered the earth]] with nowhere to go and nowhere to return to. Many of the short stories in the game's [[ShowWithinAShow "One Thousand Years of Dreams"]] go into just how [[WhoWantsToLiveForever tragic]] this can be. [[EarnYourHappyEnding It gets better for him in the end]], [[spoiler: when he reunites with and is ultimately able to settle down with his (also immortal) wife, Sarah.]]

* Embi, a minor character in ''Webcomic/GirlGenius'', swore an oath to his gods when he was young to see the world before he died. He's now 130, at the ''least''. This is mostly played for laughs, though.

* Gouda of the ''WebAnimation/PuffinForest'' "TabletopGame/CurseOfStrahd" module struck a deal with a Death Tyrant so that she would always be "the hero". This granted her ResurrectiveImmortality by way of gaining a new and different body each time she died but she was also cursed to constantly by distracted and sidetracked by new "adventures", preventing her from returning home. As a result she was destined to spend eternity wandering the Demiplanes of Dread spreading chaos in her wake.

* ''Manga/TsubasaReservoirChronicle'' and ''Manga/XxxHolic'': [[spoiler:Syaoran Li and his "progeny" Watanuki]] are men without/outside ''the time-space continuum'' due to a magician creating clones of [[spoiler:Li and his girlfriend Sakura]] that eventually became [[spoiler:''[[MindScrew Li's own parents]]'']]. When [[spoiler:Li]] left his "home" dimension (where his parents lived) his absence created [[spoiler:Watanuki]], who subconsciously knew he shouldn't be alive. Eventually they defeated the magician but that didn't resolve the fact that [[spoiler:Li and Watanuki]] shouldn't even exist. In the end, they paid a price to be able to live: [[spoiler:Li]] would dimension-hop until he found a world where he, [[spoiler:Sakura]], and the clones could live while [[spoiler:Watanuki]] would remain in [[TheLittleShopThatWasntThereYesterday a small but interdimensional space]] until [[spoiler:[[DeadForReal Yuuko]]]] returned -- unlike most of the examples their fates are presented as ''choices'' rather then punishments or unfortunate side-effects. At least they'll be able to visit each other/have visitors often, respectively (unlike some [[Literature/HisDarkMaterials interdimensional lovebirds]]).

* In the ''VideoGame/MegaManZero'' series, for his crime of starting the Elf Wars, Dr. Weil was locked into a biomechanical suit that made him immortal. He also had his memories [[BrainUploading converted into data]] so that he would never forget his crimes. He was then exiled to the wastelands. This [[ThePunishment backfired spectacularly]] a hundred years later.

* Guantánamo Bay detention camp in UsefulNotes/{{Cuba}}, established in 2002 by the Department of Defense under the UsefulNotes/GeorgeWBush administration for prisoners suspected of terrorism to be indefinitely detained while awaiting trial, subjected to brutal torture with no Geneva Convention rights granted to them. After taking office, UsefulNotes/BarackObama reduced the number of inmates with other countries agreeing to accept them, and UsefulNotes/DonaldTrump signed an executive order to keep the detention camp open indefinitely.

When people wander by choice, this becomes WalkingTheEarth. When a ship is being followed, it's a SternChase instead; a vehicle of any kind that takes dead souls to another world is an AfterlifeExpress. There may also be some overlap with NobleFugitive. The cursed character can sometimes be co-opted as TheDrifter, or if they're specifically out to do good, a KnightErrant. And if it's nobody's fault, they may just have NoSenseOfDirection. It's a possible destiny of those who are BarredFromTheAfterlife.

* The man himself shows up in ''Manga/FrankenFran'', his body so far gone that ''[[BodyHorror masses of insects have replaced his organs]]''. Because he's an immortal bug-man, Fran & Co. think he might be a [[OurVampiresAreDifferent Nosferatu]][[note]]You know how WesternAnimation/TheNightmareBeforeChristmas's Oogie-Boogie is actually a mass of bugs and Literature/{{Dracula}} turns into a mass of bats? German vampires traditionally can do that to escape being burned[[/note]]. They figure out who he is after he explains that his condition happened after he "mistreated [[UsefulNotes/{{Jesus}} a certain man]]" and Fran kindly [[WeCanRebuildHim restores his body]] and is excited at the fact that she can experiment as much as she likes on an apparent immortal; Veronica is less then thrilled, especially after the Wandering Jew says that he's [[ICannotSelfTerminate "very tired and wants to rest"]]. [[spoiler: They both get their wish when, just as Fran gives him a clean bill of health, he sees a crucifix and a vision of Jesus and begs for forgiveness. Jesus says something along the lines of "There is always forgiveness." And he dies by 'liquefying''. Veronica notes that he was very glad to see Jesus (he was staying as far from humans as possible and probably never seen a crucifix before) and finally rest.]] This is one of the few cases of MaybeMagicMaybeMundane that appear in the series.

* In ''VideoGame/{{Terraria}}'', one appears as a miniboss in the Pirate Invasion event. Defeating it requires destroying its four cannons it uses to attack.

The ''Flying Dutchman'' variant (sources differ on whether ''Flying Dutchman'' was the name of the ship or a nickname for her captain) first popped up in the seventeenth century, and was said to be an old sailing superstition. The most common form of this story is that the ship was trying to get around the Cape of Good Hope, a notoriously stormy and risky crossing for sailing vessels, and was caught in a gale; at this point, the captain, Hendrick van der Decken, curses God and vows that he will round of the Cape even if it takes him until Judgement Day, earning himself the curse that he shall do precisely that. The ship is then said to be stuck eternally trying to make the trip, sometimes appearing to other vessels to either run them down, try to leave messages to people long dead, or just generally portend doom.

* Guantánamo Bay detention camp in UsefulNotes/{{Cuba}}, established in 2002 by the Department of Defense under the UsefulNotes/GeorgeWBush administration for prisoners suspected of terrorism to be indefinitely detained while awaiting trial, subjected to brutal torture with no Geneva Convention rights granted to them. After taking office, UsefulNotes/BarackObama reduced the number of inmates with other countries agreeing to accept them, and UsefulNotes/DonaldTrump recently signed an executive order to keep the detention camp open indefinitely.

The ''Flying Dutchman'' is BarredFromTheAfterlife and cursed to go WalkingTheEarth (or sailing or flying or...) [[WhoWantsToLiveForever forever]]. Most versions of this fall into one of two types: the ''Flying Dutchman'', cursed to sail the seas, and the Wandering Jew, forced to wander the earth.