Vander Decken

Only a darkened outline of him has ever been depicted. That silhouette suggests a fully grown man dressed in a captain's coat. In the flashbacks where he appears, a sword can be seen in his grip.

Tales hold that on a single night Decken lost his mind and threw his entire crew to their deaths, an act of defiance said to have angered heaven and drawn divine punishment. While legends are prone to distortion, what remains certain is that the man was mad. He also harbored a fixation on the Mermaid Princess of his time and her remarkable ability to command the Sea Kings.

Centuries ago Decken commanded a pirate crew aboard the Flying Dutchman. As the story goes, during one stormy night he abruptly turned violent and hurled his crewmates overboard, killing them, which brought a curse down upon both him and his vessel so that they would roam the seas without end. Pappag has cautioned that such legends tend to be embellished, leaving only two facts beyond dispute: that Decken truly existed and that he was undeniably insane.

At some point he descended to the ocean floor in pursuit of the fabled Mermaid Princess, who could call upon the Sea Kings, yet he never reached his goal and died on Fish-Man Island. His knowledge of that mermaid legend passed down through his bloodline, and his eighth-generation descendant, Vander Decken IX, carried on piloting the Flying Dutchman. That successor learned the current Mermaid Princess, Shirahoshi, possessed the very power his family had long sought, and he repeatedly tried to force her into marriage before being defeated and arrested.