Daedalus Daedalus, and he to Hephaestus, son of Zeus." This suggests that Daedalus was related to Hephaestus, the god of blacksmiths, and therefore to Zeus himself. Daedalus is first mentioned by Homer as the creator of a wide dancing-ground for Ariadne. He also created the Labyrinth on Crete, in which the Minotaur (part man, part bull) was kept. In the story of the labyrinth as told by the Hellenes, the Athenian hero Theseus is challenged to kill the Minotaur, finding his way with the help of Ariadne's thread. Daedalus' appearance in Homer is in an extended metaphor, "plainly not Homer's invention",
HMS Minotaur (1793) M. W. Turner depicted the sinking, though the subject was not originally the "Minotaur", but a generic merchant ship. Turner had been producing sketches in preparation for the painting as early as 1805, but by the time he had completed the painting in 1810, the recent wreck of "Minotaur" was a subject of much discussion. He named the painting to capitalise on this public interest. The shipwreck of "Minotaur" remains the largest ever, in terms of loss of life, on the Dutch coast, with the possible exception of the loss of "HMS Hero" on 24/25 December 1811, on the same