The increible Non-Flying Dutchman

by mariejasmin

While reading some olympic news spiced up with useless knowledge à la Jean Dion, I found this rather incredible fact:

[...] the American Johnny Spillane, in nordic combined —cross-country ski plus ski jump — has a damn holy fear of… travel by airplane. «I hate it», said he, «I just sit there and suffer. From the time the wheels come up to the time they go down, I’m not having any fun. » And nevertheless, he likes flying with no aircraft.

The fear of flying also has the names erophobia, aviatophobia, aviophobia ou pteromechanophobia. Here is a list of words ending in phobia. I haven’t found one that stands for fear of overly pretentious pseudo-scientific words ending in phobia, but I like Aibohphobia – fear of palindromes.

Aside from Johnny Spillane, the amazing «Non-Flying Dutchman», Dennis Bergcamp, is known for his fear of flying. The football player, who’s caliber would be high enough to scare an acrophobic, suffered from aviopoibia to the point he refused to take part in any match he couldn’t get to without flying. European distances being somewhat more reasonable than, say, a Montreal-Vancouver drive, he could represent Holland at the 1994 and 1998 World Cups. However, he had to desert his team, otherwise known as «The Flying Dutchmen», for the 2002 Mundial, held in Japan and Korea. He could have hitched a ship ride with fellow countryman and captain of the Flying Dutchman, Barend Fokke, had the latter not vanished mysteriously towards the end of the 17th century…

Legend has it Captain Barend Fokke and his crew were banned to err in between worlds indefinitely for a pact they had made with the demon. In effect, the men and their ship could sail between Holland and Java in only three month and four days, which clearly hints at something fishy going on.

Moreover, Fokke was, apparently, extremely ugly, which added to the credibility of an infernal pact[2].

The Dutch vessel then vanished without a trace, and many phantom ship apparitions, from South Africa to the North Sea, were subsequently attributed to Fokke, the probable captain of the Flying Dutchman. Later though, Flying Dutchman viewership crashed low as martian spacecraft sightings increased…

We know today that phantom ships exist. They are an optical illusion caused by the refraction of light near the horizon in atypical temperature conditions. The phenomenon is called Fata Morgana, and causes objects which are behind the horizon line to appear to float slightly above the horizon, deformed. Fata Morgana is the name given to Morgan le Fay of the arthurian legend in the Italian translation, but I digress…

Flying Dutchman par George Grie