For Fact's Sake: Phantom of another Opera

By Murray Stewart

The For Fact’s Sake columns are – according to Google research and the Duck ’n Fiddle’s archives – sort of based in truth.

We’ve all heard tales about the Flying Dutchman, described as a fully rigged, three-masted Eastindiaman, which would suddenly materialise through the mist, then simply vanish a few minutes later.

Marco Polo claimed he saw it while rounding the Cape of Storms on his way to the East, but not unlike a certain unnamed ex-President, he was renowned for telling the most appalling porkies. So let’s dig deeper.

There seems to be a thread of truth in the yarns that were spun around this mystical ghost ship. Hundreds of people claimed to have seen it, and although he’d never even been to Africa, let alone Cape Point, Wagner managed to write an opera about it – Der Vliegende Holländer. But more about him later.

On a steaming hot day in March 1939, Glencairn beach in False Bay was buzzing with sun worshippers catching the last summer rays, when out of the haze sailed a fully-rigged Eastindiaman – a ship last seen centuries ago around the Cape.

Everyone on the beach saw it – no question. Hundreds of people who didn’t know each other, all recounted exactly the same image.

A newspaper article the next day reported that “...a ship with all her sails drawing well, although there was not a breath of wind at the time, appeared to be headed towards Muizenberg”.

Click on the newspaper below to read more (see page 6).