The Flying Dutchman and Other Folktales from the Netherlands

Copyright © 2008 by Theo Meder

Because all seawater is salt, one might say.

That's no explanation, though.

Learned men claim that they can tell us exactly way, and they use colossally elaborate and incomprehensible formulas to prove it.

Perhaps they are right, but there are people who claim that the explanation is much simpler.

As a matter of fact, there once was a tremendously big ship called Sinternuiten. [1] The ship was so big that, if it lay at anchor, the stem was situated near Texel, [2] while the helm got stuck in the Damrak of Amsterdam. [3]

That's how monstrously big the ship must have been. Where it came from, nobody knew, but the fact is that the ship existed.

The ship was as long as the road from Texel to Amsterdam, perhaps even longer, because it took a horseman six weeks to ride from the front of the ship to the back.

When the captain gave his orders, it was quite an event. In those days the telephone did not exist, and they hadn't thought of signaling with flags. Imagine, if one had to sail such a sizeable ship, who would have thought of using little flags? No, the captain used to shout out his orders, obviously, and the boatswain blew his whistle as usual, but well ... before everyone aboard was well aware of what had to happen, six weeks had passed.

So, it could well happen that the order to sail was given on the first of January, and the ship effectively left the shore in mid-February. These delays were typical-kind of a pathetic situation, isn't it?

Finally, the ship wrecked and went to the bottom of the sea – as was to be expected. It perished in the middle of the North Sea, the whole crew drowned, and the entire shipload of salt went down into the waves.

Now you understand why the North Sea, which used to be full of fresh water and swarmed with perch and carp, is so salty nowadays.

Never mind what the scholars say.

[1] The name of the ship is a popular allusion to Sint Reinuit, one of the gluttonous sham saints of medieval carnival, who was driven around the town in a ship, inviting all irresponsible people to join him.

[2] The first Dutch island north of North Holland.

[3] A distance of over a hundred kilometers (approximately 62 miles).

This story is an etiological tale (explaining why the sea is salt) as well as a tall tale (about a ship of impossible magnitude). Several tale types can be attached to this story: SINUR 7B, Warum das Meer zalzig ist (Why the sea is salty); ATU 565, The Magic Mill; and ATU 1960H, The Great Ship. In other versions of the tall tale, storytellers expand upon the greatness of the ship, by saying for instance that men who climb the mast go up as beardless boys and come down as grey-bearded men. The translation is based on S. Franke, Legenden langs de Noordzee (Zutphen, 1934), pp. 105-106.