INTRO:
Hello and welcome to Myth Monsters, my name is Erin and I’ll be your host for these little snack bite size podcasts on folklore and mythical monsters from around the world.
These podcasts focus on the actual cryptids, folklore and mythic monsters from global mythology, rather than focusing on full stories of heroes and their big adventures.
I’ll also be dropping in some references that they have to recent culture and where you can see these represented in modern day content so you can learn more, and get as obsessed as I am about these absolute legends of the mythological world.
Well I’ve now finished Baldur’s Gate 3 and I feel like a shell of a person, although I will now be starting my second run through as an evil character. But that does mean that you have me back and paying more attention, so that’s always a bonus.
DESCRIPTION:
But the most important question this week is do you fear death? Because this week, we’re heading out to the seven seas for a nautical legend, and one that is still super prevalent - it’s Davy Jones.
Now, the most important thing to note about Davy Jones from a folklore perspective is that he is not a corporeal figure. He is not the squid faced, crab clawed northern Bill Nighy character from the Pirates of the Caribbean films. But is more considered a ghost or even sometimes a devil of the seas.
With this said, he does have a description which is that he has saucer-like eyes, three rows of human teeth, horns and a tail as well as blue smoke coming from his nostrils. As I said, he’s more of a spirit than of a physical being, and so can pass freely through solid objects and can apparently speak - but cannot speak any recognisable language to people. He is generally considered to be a deity of death at sea, and sailors typically refuse to talk about him.
He is often linked to ghost ships, and is sometimes noted to be aboard the legendary Flying Dutchman ghost ship as his main, however, the two are actually not linked in folklore at all. He gets around by just emerging as a spirit on the boat that attracts his attention. According to legend, he sentences the person or people on the boat to death, and they are immediately transported to the bottom of the ocean to drown.
Davy Jones is known to be a malevolent figure, taking individual sailors and whole crews to their doom beneath the waves of the sea with no remorse - almost obeying the terrifying call of the sea herself, in her famously tempestuous way. He is known for having an infamous locker - why a locker, noone is particularly sure, however this is where any of his victims would be sent to die.
Davy Jones’ Locker is probably the most famous thing about Davy Jones himself, however, this is just referring to the bottom of the sea or more accurately, a watery grave. We still use this as an idiom to this day of people meeting their end in the water, and is used to represent the slightly more sinister idea of sailors afterlives and being held in a physical underwater place like this locker for all eternity, rather than passing onto a traditional Heaven and Hell situation.
In terms of powers, because he is noted to be a spirit - he can transport anywhere with ease and is completely untargetable for attacks. He also seems to hold the power to transport people to his ‘locker’. It’s thought that he lives under the water, waiting to be called to do his duty of ridding the ocean of people.
ORIGIN:
For etymology, Davy Jones is, of course, an actual name. Davy is short for David, and Jones is a very common English surname, especially in the UK. There is some history behind the name too, as there are loads of reasons as to why it might have ended up being this name - but none of them are confirmed. I’ll go into these shortly but there were also lots of expressions around Davy Jones, such as to awaken Davy Jones meant to cause a storm, to see you to Davy Jones was a threat to kill someone, to be in Davy’s grip was to be close to death or very scared, and to be sent to Davy Jones’ locker was to die at sea.
For history, this one is wild. The story originally was written down in 1726 by Daniel Defoe in his book ‘Four Years Voyages of Captain George Roberts’. He said the following;
Some of Loe's Company said, They would look out some things, and give me along with me when I was going away; but Ruffel told them, they should not, for he would toss them all into Davy Jones's Locker if they did.
Daniel Defoe was an English writer, which does explain the very English names of this figure and is important to note because the English during the 1700’s were going around the world on ships as the biggest Empire, and because we are an island - our crowning glory has always been our Navy, and it’s how we ended up being the worldwide superpower for such a long time, and through nefarious means mind you. But the English dominated the seas alongside the Spanish, French and Dutch - and so it makes sense that this myth started in the UK and was prevalent throughout many European countries because sailors generally spread rumours and superstitions through word of mouth.
Davy Jones came up again in 1751 in a book called The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle by Tobias Smollett with the earliest proper description of him;
This same Davy Jones, according to sailors, is the fiend that presides over all the evil spirits of the deep, and is often seen in various shapes, perching among the rigging on the eve of hurricanes:, ship-wrecks, and other disasters to which sea-faring life is exposed, warning the devoted wretch of death and woe.
However, there are other origin stories that spread only through word of mouth which relate back to the name of Davy Jones. One was that he was the first assistant to King Neptune, the Roman god of the sea. Another was that there was a pub owner in the UK called Davy Jones, who threw drunken sailors into his ale locker and sold them into slavery on boats. He then went bankrupt and became a pirate himself, stealing many ships and crews across the Atlantic, where many crew members were decapitated and the others were locked in before the vessel sank with the captain onboard. Another is that a famously short-sighted sailor, Duffer Jones, very often fell off the side of his ship.
There’s even one that he was the reincarnation of the biblical prophet Jonah, with Davy Jones meaning ‘ghost of Jonah’, who was punished for disobedience and became the devil of the sea after his crew murdered him and this was talked about in a Dictionary in 1898 with;
He’s gone to Jones' locker, i.e. he is dead. Jones is a corruption of Jonah, the prophet, who was thrown into the sea. Locker, in seaman’s phrase, means any receptacle for private stores; and duffy is a ghost or spirit among the West Indians. So the whole phrase is, "He is gone to the place of safe keeping, where duffy Jonah was sent to. Another version of the Jonah story was that he spent a few days in a whale, where Moby Dick comes from, and said that his days there were Davy Jones’ Locker. Jonah became, and still is very unlucky for sailors too. I mentioned the Duffy within the West Indian community in that last quote, and according to legend there the Duppy comes out at night to haunt people on boats.
Amongst the Welsh, Davy Jones refers to their patron saint - Saint David, who is believed to have saved them from the sea and protects good sailors, whilst bad ones are sent to the Locker.
Lastly, another dictionary from 1785 defined him as "DAVID JONES. The devil, the spirit of the sea: called Necken or Draugr in the north countries, such as Norway, Denmark, and Sweden" and Davy Jones’ locker as "DAVID JONES' LOCKER. The sea". I thought it was awesome that the Necken and Draugr were mentioned here, it’s a really cool comparison from Norse mythology, both of which I’ve covered already in their respective episodes.
This is all super interesting history, and it all comes from the mouths of sailors - who had their own cultures and especially superstitions on their own boats, some of them even still being present in modern day boating. There were very strict rules when you were on a 18th century boat such as no women allowed, black cats being lucky, the birds albatross and cormorants being a good omen, whistling being taboo as it was considered coded messaging and bananas being bad luck.
Because of these superstitions, being a sailor was a different culture to being at home - especially with folklore - and Davy Jones was part of this, as were sea monsters, ghost ships and the infamous Kraken. A lot of these tales came from old Norse and old English myths from Viking and Saxon times, and died off on land - but not on the sea. You can still find black cats onboard ships now, as well as stereotypes that have prevailed since then about sailors such as swearing like a sailor or having tattoos - which all stem from the 1600 and 1700’s.
In terms of other comparisons though, of course we can look at something as mighty as the Kraken, one that has been around for centuries and never proven to exist and mostly started within the Vikings whilst doing the same thing as the Brits - conquering other countries whilst navigating harsh and cold seas of Europe. We can also consider the Nokken or Necken, but they are more water spirits that tempt you to drown, rather than act as judge, jury and executioner.
I actually think the most relevant figure within folklore would be Charon or Harbard from Greek, Roman and Norse mythology; these are the ferryman for the dead, and will take them over the respective death rivers into the afterlife. It makes sense that Davy Jones acts as one of these for specifically sailors.
In real life comparisons, I guess there aren’t really any - the only thing left to do is debunk these. Firstly, we need to fully debunk the Pirates of the Caribbean Davy Jones, as I’ve said - he was never a fully established person, and was never noted to have a crew or a ship, let alone them be supernatural sea animals or have control of the Kraken. The locker was not a separate plane of existence where everything was weird and made of crabs. Whilst Disney did a fantastic job of these movies and I love them, they don’t actually represent Davy Jones or his locker in the same way they are presented in folklore.
To debunk the actual folklore though, a lot of this myth is just a name for a metaphor. It’s just a way of personifying death at sea - however, because he was named, he became a ferryman-like figure for sailors and ended up being the physical representation of the sea taking their lives. So even the idea of him being a spirit, demon or deity is interesting because it does just stem from the imagination of sailors who put a common name to a really horrible experience.
CULTURAL SIGNIFICANCE:
Now onto modern media, you know I thought there would be more this week for Davy Jones specifically, but I’ve included ghost pirates in here too just for good measure.
For art, have a look at these classic portraits of Davy Jones, such as Davy Jones’ Locker by John Tenniel from 1892 and Davy Jones by George Cruikshank from 1832.
In movies, we have; Pirates of the Caribbean of course, Blackbeard’s Ghost, Campfire Tales, The Fog, Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger, Jolly Roger: Massacre at Cutter’s Grove, Curse of Pirate Death & CrossBones.
For TV, we have; The Monkees, Popeye, Aesop’s Fables, Spongebob Squarepants, Monster High: Haunted, Terrytoons, Willie Whopper, One Piece, Queen Blade’s Redemption, Berserk, Supernatural, World of Winx, Defenders of the Earth, Scooby-Doo, The Real Ghostbusters, Camp Lakebottom, Garfield, Venture Bros, Kim Possible, The Pirates of Dark Water, Danny Phantom, Powerpuff Girls, Hilda, South Park, Growing Up Creepie, Fairly Odd Parents, Codename Kids Next Door, Goober and the Ghost Chasers, The Backyardigans, Castlevania, Ducktales & Cyberchase.
In video games, we have ones such as; DragonFable, Realm of the Mad God, Nightmares from the Deep 3: Davy Jones, Blood Money, Banjo-Tooie, Fallen London, Alone in the Dark 2, Impossmole, Killer Instinct, Dubloon, Chrono Cross, Arcanum, Dota 2, Fable 2, Darkest Dungeon, Five Nights at Freddy’s, New World, DragonFable, Pokemon, Ratchet and Clank, Thief 2: The Metal Age, Soul Calibur, Monkey Island, Super Mario Bros, League of Legends, Pirates of the Caribbean Online, LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean, Divinity: Original Sin, Persona 5, Drawn to Life, MediEvil, Path of Exile, World of Warcraft, Uncharted 4, Vega Strike, Moshi Monsters, Total War: Warhammer & Skyward Sword.
My book recommendations this week are ales of the Sea: Traditional Stories of Magic and Adventure from Around the World by Maggie Chiang & Breverton's Nautical Curiosities: A Book of the Sea by Terry Breverton for some nautical based myths and monsters that aren’t always covered in regional mythology and folklore.
DO I THINK THEY EXISTED?
Now it’s time for, do I think they existed?
Well, it’s a tricky one this week - because the monster himself is more the depths of the ocean for old timey sailors, and I guess even modern sailors and passengers alike. I know if I died in the sea, all gods forbid - that people would say I was in Davy Jones’ locker, that would be the coolest way to tell people I drowned.
Anyway, I think this monster does still very much exist based on the idea of this. But if we’re talking about the spirit who just turns up on your boat and goes, lol, time to die and you’re transported to the bottom of the ocean - that’s pretty rough and I’m not sure how much I can get behind this.
A fun thing I think of when I think of Davy Jones is of course, the Disney version - however, when my sister and I were younger, we used to put our hands on our faces and waggle out fingers at each other to do an impression of him shouting whenever we used to try and make each other laugh, and it still works to this day and we are both in our late twenties.
But what do you think? Did Davy Jones roam the seas locking people up on the ocean floor? Let me know on Twitter!
OUTRO:
What an awesome legend, I was super excited to cover this one and honestly I’m so glad there was so much content around him and the folklore around him.
Next week, we’re heading over to Norse mythology because it kind of works with this monster - and looking at a mythical creature who has one of the most important jobs, running messages up and down the world tree, get your nuts ready next Thursday for Ratatoskr!
For now, thank you so much for listening, it’s been an absolute pleasure. If you enjoyed this podcast, please give it a rating on the service you’re listening on - I’ve got the twitter for any questions, or suggestions on what monsters to cover next and I’d love to hear from you. The social media handles for Tiktok, Youtube and Instagram are mythmonsterspodcast, and twitter is mythmonsterspod. But all of our content can be found at mythmonsters.co.uk - you can also find us on Goodpods, Buymeacoffee and Patreon if you want to help me fund the podcast too.
Come join the fun though and share this with your pals, they might love me as much as you do.
But for now, stay spooky and I’ll see you later babes.