The question is how to justify the use of fly in “the Flying Dutchman”.
It confused me for a long time. The right word could be wander, sail, roam, drift, but why fly? I looked it up the dictionary, and didn't find any meaning of fly that qualifies here, and I have never seen the word fly used like that anywhere else.
Can I say:
The Hukou policy in China made me homeless in my home country. For the years I just fly.
It feels so weird. “I just roam” or “I just drift” sounds better. The only case I can find of using fly to mean roaming is in the movie Up In The Air, where roaming literally means flying.
Best Answer
I could be wrong, but my understanding is that the name does not refer to the manner in which the Flying Dutchman moves, but rather its rapidity. The relevant definition is:
In other words, the Dutchman flies because it is a very fast ship.
Another explanation offered by Wikipedia, is that the entire idea of the Flying Dutchman came from an optical illusion in which caused a ship near the horizon to appear to be floating in the sky.
In your sentence, yes you can use the word fly, but I don't think it has the meaning you intend. Fly tends to imply an active, intentional movement, while roaming implies a passive or undirected movement. In this context, I think roamed is the more appropriate verb.