Eponymous character from The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, a poem written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge around 1798, published in that year and republished in revised form in 1800 and 1817. The Mariner is a cursed former seafarer whose shooting of an albatross at sea brings doom upon his shipmates as Death wins their lives in a game of dice, and the poem is his narration of his tragic ordeal. The poem's most famous lines are perhaps 'Water, water, every where | Nor any drop to drink', referring to abundant but salty seawater.

The legend of the Flying Dutchman is thought to be among the inspirations for the Ancient Mariner, and when Team 11 of Series 3 gave the latter as the answer to Golgarach's second question, he revealed that the former was the truth he sought.

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