What is the name of the central character of Frederick Marryat's novel "The Phantom Ship"?

"The Phantom Ship", first published in 1839, is a novel by the English author Frederick Marryat (1792-1848), perhaps most famous for his children's historical novel set during the English Civil War, "The Children of the New Forest".

It explores the legend of the Flying Dutchman (himself a reworking of the Wandering Jew in folklore), who is condemned to sail forever after defying the devil himself. To many of us, the most familiar version of the story will be Richard Wagner's 1843 opera. We don't know if Wagner was familiar with Marryat's novel, and he himself acknowledged the influence of a work by Heinrich Heine.

Marryat was a sea captain himself, and knew what he was talking about. In his work, the central character is not the Flying Dutchman himself, though his presence still pervades the work, but his son, Philip Vanderdecken, who sets sail with the Dutch East India Company to present his father with a relic of the holy cross in the hope of gaining his salvation.

He is not averse to laying on the Gothic melodrama with a trowel, and the cast of characters includes a part-Arabian enchantress, a demon pilot, and far from godly monks, not to mention spooky goings-on in the Harz mountains.

Unlike "Children of the New Forest" and his more conventional maritime fiction, the novel was not well-received by his contemporaries, though Edgar Allan Poe ironically conceded it was by no means the worst thing he had written!