Treasure Island

Historical allusions

Real pirates and piracy

Historian Luis Junco suggests that Treasure Island is a combination of the story of the murder of Captain George Glas on board the Earl of Sandwich in 1765 and the taking of the ship Walrus off the island of La Graciosa near Tenerife. The pirates of La Graciosa buried their treasure there, and all were subsequently killed in a bloody battle with the British navy; the treasure was never recovered.

In his book Pirates of the Carraigin, David Kelly deals with the piracy and murder of Captain Glas and others by the Ship's Cook and his gang on board a ship travelling from Tenerife to London. The perpetrators of this crime also buried the considerable treasure they had stolen but most of it was later recovered. They were all executed in Dublin in 1766. In his research, Kelly showed that Stevenson was a neighbour of the named victim in Edinburgh, and so was aware from an early age of these events, which had been a scandal at the time. Stevenson and his family were members of a church congregation set up by the victim's father. Although he never visited Ireland, Stevenson based at least two other books, Kidnapped and Catriona on real crimes that were perpetrated in Dublin; these crimes were all reported in detail in The Gentleman's Magazine, published in Dublin and Edinburgh.[8]

Other allusions to real piracy include:

  • Five real-life pirates mentioned are William Kidd (active 1696–1699), Blackbeard (1716–1718), Edward England (1717–1720), Howell Davis (1718–1719), and Bartholomew Roberts (1719–1722). Kidd buried treasure on Gardiners Island, though the booty was recovered by authorities soon afterwards.[9]
  • The name "Israel Hands" was taken from that of a real pirate in Blackbeard's crew, whom Blackbeard maimed (by shooting him in the knee) simply to ensure that his crew remained in terror of him. Allegedly, Hands was taken ashore to be treated for his injury and was not at Blackbeard's last fight (the incident is depicted in Tim Powers' novel On Stranger Tides), and this alone saved him from the gallows. Supposedly, he later became a beggar in England.
  • Silver refers to "three hundred and fifty thousand" pieces of eight at the "fishing up of the wrecked plate ships". This remark conflates two related events: first, the salvage of treasure from the 1715 Treasure Fleet which was wrecked off the coast of Florida in a hurricane; second, the seizure of 350,000 salvaged pieces of eight the following year (out of several million) by privateer Henry Jennings. This event is mentioned in the introduction to Johnson's General History of the Pyrates.
  • Silver refers to a ship's surgeon from Roberts' crew who amputated his leg and was later hanged at Cape Coast Castle, a British fortification on the Gold Coast of Africa. The records of the trial of Roberts' men list Peter Scudamore as the chief surgeon of Roberts' ship Royal Fortune. Scudamore was found guilty of willingly serving with Roberts' pirates and various related criminal acts, as well as attempting to lead a rebellion to escape once he had been apprehended. He was, as Silver relates, hanged, in 1722.
  • Stevenson refers to the Viceroy of the Indies, a ship sailing from Goa, India (then a Portuguese colony), which was taken by Edward England off Malabar while John Silver was serving aboard England's ship the Cassandra. No such exploit of England's is known, nor any ship by the name of the Viceroy of the Indies. However, in April 1721, the captain of the Cassandra, John Taylor (originally England's second in command who had marooned him for being insufficiently ruthless), together with his pirate partner, Olivier Levasseur, captured the vessel Nostra Senhora do Cabo near Réunion island in the Indian Ocean. The Portuguese galleon was returning from Goa to Lisbon with the Conde da Ericeira, the recently retired Viceroy of Portuguese India, aboard. The viceroy had much of his treasure with him, making this capture one of the richest pirate hauls ever. This is possibly the event that Stevenson referred to, though his (or Silver's) memory of the event seems to be slightly confused. The Cassandra was last heard of in 1723 at Portobelo, Panama, a place that also briefly figures in Treasure Island as "Portobello".
  • The preceding two references are inconsistent, as the Cassandra (and presumably Silver) was in the Indian Ocean during the time that Scudamore was surgeon on board the Royal Fortune, in the Gulf of Guinea.
  • A real life 1800's smuggling gang, the "Benbow Brandy Men", operated out of the Benbow pub in Penzance, smuggling gin, brandy, and tobacco to avoid paying the massive import taxes imposed by the Crown to fund its foreign wars.[10]

Other allusions

Robert Louis Stevenson
  • 1689: A pirate whistles "Lillibullero".
  • 1702: The Admiral Benbow Inn on the Devon coast, where Jim and his mother live, is named after the real life Admiral John Benbow (1653–1702).
  • 1733: Foundation of Savannah, Georgia, where Captain Flint died in 1754.
  • 1745: Doctor Livesey was at the Battle of Fontenoy (1745).
  • 1747: Squire Trelawney and Long John Silver both mention "Admiral Hawke", i.e. Edward Hawke, 1st Baron Hawke (1705–81), promoted to rear admiral in 1747.
  • 1749: The novel refers to the Bow Street Runners (1749).
  • Treasure Island was in part inspired by R. M. Ballantyne's The Coral Island,[11] which Stevenson admired for its "better qualities."[12] Stevenson alludes to Ballantyne in the epigraph at the beginning of Treasure Island, "To the Hesitating Purchaser", "... If studious youth no longer crave, His ancient appetites forgot, Kingston, or Ballantyne the brave, Or Cooper of the wood and wave ..."

Possible allusions

Characters

  • Squire Trelawney may have been named for Edward Trelawney, Governor of Jamaica 1738–52.
  • Dr. Livesey may have been named for Joseph Livesey (1794–1884), a famous 19th-century temperance advocate, founder of the tee-total "Preston Pledge". In the novel, Dr. Livesey warns the drunkard Billy Bones that "the name of rum for you is death."[13][14]

Treasure Island

Norman IslandDead Chest Island as viewed from Deadman's Bay, Peter IslandView of Fidra from Yellowcraigs

Various claims have been made that one island or another inspired Treasure Island:

  • Isla de Pinos near Cuba, which served as a supply base for pirates for about 300 years, is believed to have inspired Treasure Island.[15][16]
  • Norman Island in the British Virgin Islands was supposedly mentioned to Stevenson by a sailor uncle, and also possesses a "Spyglass Hill" like the fictional Treasure Island.[17]
  • Cocos Island off Costa Rica has many similarities with the fictional treasure island. British trader Captain William Thompson buried the stolen treasury of Peru there in 1820; an original inventory showed 113 gold religious statues (one a life-sized Virgin Mary), 200 chests of jewels, 273 swords with jewelled hilts, 1,000 diamonds, solid-gold crowns, 150 chalices, and hundreds of gold and silver bars. The real treasure has never been found, despite more than 300 expeditions to the island. Stevenson mentions the buried treasure and Captain Thompson in an 1881 letter to W. E. Henley, where he also provides the earliest known title for the book: "The Sea Cook, or Treasure Island: a Story for Boys".
  • Dead Chest Island, a barren rock in the British Virgin Islands, which Stevenson found mentioned in Charles Kingsley's At Last: A Christmas in the West Indies,[18] and which he said "was the seed" for the phrase "Dead Man's Chest".[19][20]
  • Small pond in Queen Street Gardens in Edinburgh, said to have been visible from Stevenson's bedroom window in Heriot Row.[21]
  • The Napa Valley, California, where Stevenson spent his honeymoon in 1880, as narrated in his The Silverado Squatters (1883).
  • Osborn Island (now Nienstedt Island) in the Manasquan River in Brielle, New Jersey. Stevenson supposedly visited there in May 1888 (five years after writing Treasure Island) and christened it "Treasure Island"[22][23]
  • Fidra in the Firth of Forth, visible from North Berwick where Stevenson had spent many childhood holidays.[24]
  • Unst, one of the Shetland Islands, to which the map of Treasure Island bears a very vague resemblance.[25]
  • R. F. Delderfield, in The Adventures of Ben Gunn, suggests that its real name is Kidd's Island, and identifies it as an outlying island of the Leeward Islands and Windward Islands, south-south-west of Tobago (pp. 119–120).

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