Slavery as a national crime: Defining Britishness in Encounters with the Flying Dutchman

Abstract

Early British gothic fiction has often been analyzed in terms of the religious, political and cultural oppositions it helps to construct between Britain and the European continent, in particular in Catholic countries like France and Spain. One could argue that the cultural work of Gothic in these cases is to (re)define cultural differences between spaces that are geographically already separate. This division of territorial space is obviously much less clear at sea, and so this raises the question if and how national boundaries and identities are being upheld and transgressed in nautical Gothic. The figure of the Flying Dutchman, the ghostly captain doomed to sail the world seas forever, provides and interesting case study for exploring this issue of constructing such national identities. Nineteenth century British culture demonstrates a persistent preoccupation with the ghostly Dutchman. Numerous adaptations and manifestations of the Dutchman in British poetry, fiction, popular song and drama attest to the often problematic ‘Doppelgänger dilemmas’ (Rubright) the Flying Dutchman presents to a British audience: part of his frightening quality is that he is too close for comfort. In my article I will analyze representations of the Flying Dutchman in two British dramas (Fitzball & Taylor), a novel (Marryat), as well as some British poems and songs (1820-1860) in connection to encounters at sea and in the colonies. I will argue that in British nautical gothic the Flying Dutchman often serves as a projection screen for racist attitudes and pro-slavery opinions, but that British characters in these texts do not always succeed in warding off these attitudes.