There are very few who remember the unsung tale of the Floating Dutchman – the most famously forgotten pirate of all time. Nowadays, the legend is mostly carried on in the oral tradition, by only the most inebriated and dishonest of sailors… But mayhaps you are keen to hear of him?
Dutchie (as he became known to his friends, colleagues and criminal cohorts) is arguably best known as the only crewman that ever made it back to port after serving on the Flying Dutchman – being kicked off by Davy Jones himself after a drunken argument about naming rights.
Disappointed, disoriented, but not defeated, Dutchie picked himself up by his bootstraps, and set forth on the most impressive and illustrious career of buccaneering that the world had ever seen. He served with Grace O’Malley, helped Calico Jack design his flag, and taught Edward Teach how to properly grow and maintain a beard. He outdrank every pirate captain from Port Royal to the Island of Tortuga, he once found the famed lost city of El Dorado while alone in a dingy after a mutiny, and he even popularized searching for buried treasure… albeit because he was often too drunk to remember where he had left his stashes, and had a knack for not paying attention to the rising tide…
But alas, Dutchie’s success was met mostly with jealousy and resentment, and a meticulously orchestrated smear campaign kept him out of the annals of history. After centuries of plunder and pillage, the Dutchman forewent his floating and retired to the Hottentots Hollands Mountains, biding his time and toiling away at his new life’s purpose – crafting the most elusive and irresistible rum the world has ever seen…
Those who follow these legends know that if the clouds hang thick and low over the Helderberg, Dutchie is working his still – which was cobbled together with spare parts, and sheer force of will – with the sea breeze and cold mountain streams giving the elixir its distinctive taste and raucous spirit. Rumors have it that Dutchie distilled his very story into his rum, and each bottle contains the history of the privateers of old, the essence of the mountainside that is now his home, and maybe even the key to his long life?
