"A Royal Encounter" - acrylic 30x40 cm MJB 2014

    The predawn sky was clear and the sea calm as HMS Inconstant rounded the coast from Melbourne to Sydney, Australia on July 11^th 1881. Suddenly from the lookout on the forecastle came word of a vessel closing in on the port bow. Officers and crew alike – thirteen in all – crowded the rails to see for themselves.
    According to the journals of two royal midshipmen who were aboard, Prince George (later King George V) of England and his brother, Prince Albert Victor, the vessel appeared as “a strange red light as of a phantom ship all aglow”. Her “masts, spars and sails stood out in strong relief”. But moments later the apparition vanished and there remained “ no vestige nor any sign whatever on any material ship”.
    The witnesses believed they had seen the Flying Dutchman, the legendary ghost ship that has haunted sailors for centuries. With numerous variations, the legend goes like this: A Dutch captain drove his ship around Cape Horn in a savage gale against the pleas of his terrified crew, who begged him to put into port. The Holy Ghost appeared; the satanic captain fired his pistol and cursed the Lord. For his blasphemy, the captain was condemned to sail the seas for eternity, never to put into port. Sailors say an encounter with the Flying Dutchman bodes disaster.
   So it was for the HMS Inconstant. The royal journals record that later that morning the unlucky lookout fell from the fore-topmast cross trees and was “smashed to atoms”. And upon reaching port, the admiral of the ship was stricken with a fatal illness. It would seem that not even the presence of royalty could stave off the curse of the Flying Dutchman.