The Flying Dutchman

An artisan nautical dark theme — abyssal ocean, aged brass, and a bioluminescent glow.

The Flying Dutchman theme

Colours drawn from the legend of Davy Jones and his ghost ship: a hull lost in abyssal blue-black, the brass of his organ, seafoam on the wake, and a cold storm-blue in the rigging. Every colour is tuned to the same brightness so the whole palette reads as one weathered instrument rather than a box of crayons.

Three variants, one identity — they share their hues and differ only in intensity, so switching never feels like a different theme:

The Flying Dutchman — the balanced everyday palette.
High Contrast — the same colours, brighter, on near-black. WCAG AAA on text.
Soft — muted and gentle for long, low-glare sessions.

Palette

Role	Colour	Role	Colour
Keyword — storm blue	`#75acd1`	Type — aged brass	`#d3ac64`
String — seafoam	`#65bd9c`	Constant — gold	`#e0c471`
Function — bioluminescence	`#5cc4cc`	Property — shoal cyan	`#8bc0d0`
Tag & `this` — coral	`#e09585`	Comment — fog	`#6a7b8a`
Foreground — sea mist	`#bfcbd9`	Abyss — editor	`#131920`

Every role clears WCAG AA (4.5:1) against the editor background on all three variants; run npm run check:themes to see the full contrast report.

Install — VS Code

Open the Extensions view (Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+X), search The Flying Dutchman, Install.
Ctrl/Cmd+K Ctrl/Cmd+T, then pick a variant.

Or from the command line:

code --install-extension DavyJones.the-flying-dutchman-theme

Install — terminals & other editors

The same palette ships for six more surfaces. Each folder holds one file.

Where	File	Install
Ghostty	`ghostty/`	copy to `~/.config/ghostty/themes/`, set `theme = The-Flying-Dutchman`
iTerm2	`iterm/`	Preferences → Profiles → Colors → Import the `.itermcolors`
Warp	`warp/`	copy the `.yaml` to `~/.warp/themes/`
Windows Terminal	`windows-terminal/`	add the scheme to `settings.json`
Vim / Neovim	`vim/`	copy to `colors/`, then `colorscheme flying-dutchman`
Sublime Text	`sublime-text/`	Preferences → Browse Packages → drop in the `.tmTheme`

One palette, one source of truth

Every theme file in this repo is generated from a single palette so the colours can never drift apart across editors or variants:

npm run build:themes    # regenerate all editors from scripts/palette.mjs
npm run check:themes     # print the WCAG contrast report

To adjust a colour, edit scripts/palette.mjs and rebuild — never hand-edit the generated theme files. See CONTRIBUTING.md.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.

_{"Part of the ship, part of the crew."}