Who is Vanderdecken? by W. Clark Russell — Read

A scientific American gentleman has been endeavouring to determine the / paternity of the grisly and spectral commander of the _Flying Dutchman_. / I wish he had been successful, for ever since I read the "Cruise of the / _Bacchante_" I have been bewildering my brains with the same problem. / The princely word of the Royal midshipmen must be taken, and it is / plainly stated that at four o'clock a.m. on July 11, 1881, "the _Flying / Dutchman_ crossed our bows. " Nothing can be clearer than that; and, / besides, there is the additional testimony of the reverend gentleman who / accompanied the Princes and edited their interesting observations. "A / strange red light as of a phantom ship all aglow, in the midst of which / light the masts, spars, and sails of a brig two hundred yards distant / stood out in strong relief as she came up. " This appearance is in strict / correspondence with the tradition, but I wish the vessel had not been a / brig. I should not like to put my hand to it that such a rig as that of / the brig was known in Vanderdecken's days.[81] You had four-masted craft / in plenty, the fourth mast being called the bonaventure; also abundance / of three-masted vessels, the third mast rigged with a lateen sail; but / no fabric answering to what we term a brig.

Footnote 81: / There was a kind of vessel called _brigandines_, but they carried the / rig of neither the brig nor the brigantine as we understand the term.