Why “fly” in “the Flying Dutchman”?
The question is how to justify the use of fly in “the Flying Dutchman”.
It confused me for a long time. The right word could be wander, sail, roam, drift, but why fly? I looked it up the dictionary, and didn't find any meaning of fly that qualifies here, and I have never seen the word fly used like that anywhere else.
Can I say:
The Hukou policy in China made me homeless in my home country. For the years I just fly.
It feels so weird. “I just roam” or “I just drift” sounds better. The only case I can find of using fly to mean roaming is in the movie Up In The Air, where roaming literally means flying.
I could be wrong, but my understanding is that the name does not refer to the manner in which the Flying Dutchman moves, but rather its rapidity. The relevant definition is:
3 a : to move, pass, or spread quickly <rumors were flying>
— source Merriam Webster
In other words, the Dutchman flies because it is a very fast ship.
Another explanation offered by Wikipedia, is that the entire idea of the Flying Dutchman came from an optical illusion in which caused a ship near the horizon to appear to be floating in the sky.
In your sentence, yes you can use the word fly, but I don't think it has the meaning you intend. Fly tends to imply an active, intentional movement, while roaming implies a passive or undirected movement. In this context, I think roamed is the more appropriate verb.
The Hukou policy in China made me homeless in my home country. For years I roamed.
The "fly" in "Flying Dutchman" refers to the point of sail the ship is at (wind off the hind quarter to the beam), making maximum speed. See these references:
- Yachts Fly Before the Wind (1937)
- "Turn back and fly, like ships before the wind" - Shakespeare
Because the winds blow strongly off the Cape of Good Hope, a ship before the wind moves at high speed on these points of sail.
At these points of sail, small flat-bottomed sail boats will plane over the water in a good breeze, actually lifting out of the water somewhat. I suspect this is the origin of this sense of "fly".
As I note below in a comment, sailing with the wind dead astern is a slower point of sail even for boats with modern spinnakers. However "running before the wind" is quite comfortable, as the boat is flat (not heeled) and riding smoothly.
Update: From the OED:
Fly-boat: ... originally denoting one of the small boats used on the vlie or channel leading from the Zuyder Zee, afterwards applied in ridicule to the small boats used against the Spanish [in the 80-years war 1568-1648] by the Geuex de mer (1572); ... 1: A fast sailing vessel used chiefly in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries: a for rapid transportation of goods, esp in the coasting trade. obs exc spec a Dutch flat-bottomed boat.