Excerpt from The Phantom Ship, And, Olla Podrida With the publication of The Phantom Ship in 1839, Captain Marryat entered upon a new phase of his literary career. Hitherto his stories had been based on his own experience of life on the high seas, but in The Phantom Ship he forsakes the safe ground of experience for the perilous realms of the supernatural. The basis of this novel is the well-known legend of the Flying Dutchman, and in order to give his narrative that touch of remoteness from the practical realities of the present which the supernatural theme seemed to require, Captain Marryat refers it to the middle of the seventeenth century, and places his scene on board the vessels of the Dutch East India Company. This last change is of little or no importance, for although his mariners and their ships have foreign names, they bear a strong resemblance in all essentials to the bluejackets of her Majesty's navy. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.