Beadle's Dime Library No. 230

# The Flying Dutchman of 1880

This serialized adventure narrative by Captain Fred Whittaker appeared in Beadle & Adams' publication, Vol. XVIII, No. 230 (March 21, 1883). "Part II" continues the captain's first-person account of a supernatural maritime encounter in the Indian Ocean, January 1880, aboard the clipper ship Spindrift.

Captain Hutton commands a vessel carrying passengers bound for Batavia, including the ship's owner Mungo Bruce, his granddaughter Mamie, the doctor and Mrs. Peters, and various young men of business. While passengers gather on deck during a calm night, lookout Lars Nelson spots an apparition: a blazing, phantom ship sailing impossibly dead into the wind. The ghostly vessel is visible through its own rigging, sheathed in blue flame. As it approaches within a quarter-mile, a lookout plummets from the Spindrift's mast. The crew and passengers witness the spectral ship bearing down upon them in apparent collision course, generating universal terror aboard the vessel. The narrative employs nautical technical detail throughout.