Castaways of the Flying Dutchman
by Brian Jacques
Illustrated by Ian Schoenherr
327 pages
Copyright 2001
The legend of the Flying Dutchman. Who knows how it all began: Throughout the centuries many a seaman could swear an oath that he had seen the phantom ship. Plowing an endless course over storm-tossed seas and the deeps of the mighty oceans. Many a night, mariners have sat together in a lantern-lit fo'c'sle heads, speaking in hushed tones of the vessel, and its master, Captain Vanderdecken. What awful curse sent the Flying Dutchman bound on an eternal voyage, across the trackless watery wastes, from the Marquesas to the Arctic Circles, from the Coral Seas to the Yucatán Straits, forever roaming alone. Whenever the ghostly craft is sighted, death is near. Bad fortune hovers about those poor sailors, who see by chance what they wish their eyes had never witnessed.
The Flying Dutchman!
Salt-stiff rigging and gale-torn sails flapping eerily, a barnacle-crusted prow, down by the bow in soughing troughs of blue-green waves. Crewed by silent wraiths of humanity to whom time and the elements have no end. Vanderdecken paces the quarterdeck, his face like ancient yellow parchment, hair laced by flying spume, wild hopeless eyes searching the horizons of the world. Bound to the sea for eternity. For what dread crime? Which unspoken law of man, nature of God, did he break? What dread nemesis doomed him, his crew, and their ship?
Who knows how it all began?
Only two living beings!
I take up my pen to tell you the tale
Castaways is filled with breathtaking imagery of the seas and the hardships of life aboard a storm-cursed vessel. The beautiful literary portraits are no doubt inspired by Brian Jacques' years as a seaman and longshoreman. Ian Schoenherr's gorgeous cover art and chapter sketches sets the mood wonderfully for Mr. Jacques to spin a yarn around.
Harried and abused by his stepfather and stepbrothers, young Neb was alone in the world. His mother departed, and having no real family, Neb was isolated. His three stepbrothers were cruel to him, to say the very least. One dark and stormy night, Neb ran. He ran from his three tormentors, and ran from the closest thing he had to family. When he reached the wharfs at the end of dry land, he had no where furthur to flee. After a brief scuffle with his assailants, Neb was tossed into the icy, murky brine. Left for dead, Neb's siblings departed, panicked that they might be caught for their dark actions.
The very flesh on his bones nearly frozen solid, young Neb was barely able to haul himself aboard a low deck on a nearby boat. The words Fleiger Hollander were meticulously crafted into the stern of the ship in red and gold. Neb was uneducted and never learned to read, let alone read Dutch. The boy had no idea that he was aboard the Flying Dutchman, carrying a priceless shipment of emeralds. He had even less of a clue that the crew of the vessel were to be cursed to roam the seas for all time.
Blurb:
Without warning the elements returned. At the sound of a second thunderbolt the waves sprang up. Icy sleet carried sideways on the wailing wind drove a huge roller, smashing into the vessel's port side. Neb and Denmark were washed from the deck straight into the Atlantic Ocean. Clinging to the dog's collar with both hands, the boy did not see the wooden spar that struck him, nor did he know that his good and faithful dog pulled him up onto that same spar, saving them both. The last thing he remembered was a cold abyss of darkness. The Flying Dutchman receded into storm-torn darkness, leaving astern a dog clinging to a spar, with an unconscious boy draped across it, cast away from the deeps.
Books by Brian Jacques
- Redwall (1986)
- Mossflower (1988)
- Mattimeo (1989)
- Seven Strange and Ghostly Tales (1991)
- Mariel of Redwall (1991)
- Salamandastron (1992)
- Martin the Warrior (1993)
- The Bellmaker (1994)
- Outcast of Redwall (1995)
- The Great Redwall Feast (1996)
- The Pearls of Lutra (1996)
- The Long Patrol (1997)
- Marlfox (1998)
- The Legend of Luke (1999)
- Lord Brocktree (2000)
- Taggerung (2001)
- Castaways of the Flying Dutchman (2001)
- A Redwall Winter's Tale (2001)
- Triss (2002)
- Angel's Command (2003)
- Loamhedge (2003)
- Urso Brunov (2003)
- Rakkety Tam (2004)
- High Rhulain (September 20, 2005)
