A ghostly ship, the Flying Dutchman, immortalised by Wagner's opera, haunted the waters of the south Atlantic. Legend had it that in the 17th century the ship was captained by a stubborn Dutchman, Vanderdecken, who persisted against all advice in trying to round the Cape of Good Hope in spite of violent gales.
As the storms grew worse, so did Vanderdecken's obsession with the passage; he cursed his luck and blasphemed against Almighty God, even as his vessel sank. As a punishment he was condemned to sail the seas until the Judgment Day, as a warning to ungodly sailors.
There were frequent reported sightings of the Flying Dutchman. For example, the log of the British warship, HMS Bacchante, had the following entry for July 11th, 1881: "During the middle watch, the Flying Dutchman crossed our bows. "She first appeared as a strange light, as of a ship all aglow, in the midst of which light the masts, spars and sails, seemingly those of a normal brig, some 200 yards distant from us, stood out in strong relief." There are many similar reports of spectral vessels whose masts and rigging were surrounded by a ghostly, bluish light.
Meteorologists, however, suspect that alleged sightings of the Flying Dutchman involved nothing more ghostly than a nearby merchant ship whose extremities displayed "St Elmo's fire".
The phenomenon to which St Elmo, or Erasmus, for reasons of which no one is quite sure, bequeathed his name, is a faint, luminous glow that was often seen in stormy weather playing around the masts and rigging of the old sailing ships.
It occurs in thundery conditions when the electrical tension between the clouds and objects on the Earth's surface is strong enough to promote a tendency for an electric current to flow from one to the other.
Shakespeare was obviously familiar with the phenomenon. In The Tempest, as we recalled yesterday, Ariel is a sprite, or spirit, under the control of Prospero; after one of his missions - stirring up the eponymous tempest, as it happens - Ariel tells his master how he assumed the unmistakable form of St Elmo's fire:
"I boarded the King's ship; now on the beak,
Now in the waist, the deck, in every cabin,
I flam'd amazement. Sometime I'd divide,
And burn in many places; on the top mast,
The yards, and bowsprit, would I flame distinctly,
Then meet and join Jove's lightning, the precursors
O' th' dreadful thunder-claps."