Treasure Island (1993)

''Treasure Island'' (originally titled ''The Sea Cook: A Story for Boys''Hammond, J. R. 1984. "Treasure Island." In ''A Robert Louis Stevenson Companion'', Palgrave Macmillan Literary Companions. London: Palgrave Macmillan. .) is an adventure novel by Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson, telling a story of "buccaneers and buried gold". It is considered a coming-of-age story and is noted for its atmosphere, characters, and action.

The novel was originally serialised from 1881 to 1882 in the children's magazine ''Young Folks'', under the title ''Treasure Island or the Mutiny of the Hispaniola'', credited to the pseudonym "Captain George North". It was first published as a book on 14 November 1883 by Cassell & Co. It has since become one of the most often dramatized and adapted of all novels, in numerous media.

Since its publication, ''Treasure Island'' has had significant influence on depictions of pirates in popular culture, including elements such as deserted tropical islands, treasure maps marked with an "X", and one-legged seamen with parrots perched on their shoulders.Cordingly, David (1995) ''Under the Black Flag: the romance and reality of life among the pirates''; p. 7

Plot

The plot is set in the mid-18th century, when an old sailor who identifies himself as "The Captain" starts to lodge at the rural Admiral Benbow Inn on England's Bristol Channel. He tells the innkeeper's son, Jim Hawkins, to keep a lookout for "a one-legged seafaring man". A former shipmate named Black Dog confronts The Captain about a chart. They get into a violent fight, causing Black Dog to flee. The Captain, proper name Billy Bones, suffers a stroke. That night, Jim's father dies suddenly. A few days later, a blind beggar named Pew visits the inn, delivering a summons to Bones called "the black spot". Shortly thereafter, Bones suffers another stroke and dies. Pew and his accomplices attack the inn, but are routed by excise officers, and Pew is trampled to death. Jim and his mother escape with a mysterious packet from Bones' sea chest, which is found to contain a map of the island on which the infamous pirate Captain Flint hid his treasure. Jim shows the map to the local physician Dr. Livesey and the squire John Trelawney, and they decide to make an expedition to the island, with Jim serving as a cabin boy.

They set sail on Trelawney's schooner, the ''Hispaniola'', under Captain Smollett and Jim forms a strong bond with the ship's one-legged cook, Long John Silver. The crew suffers tragedy when first mate Mr. Arrow, a drunkard, is washed overboard during a storm. While hidden in an apple-barrel, Jim overhears a conversation among the Hispaniola's crew which reveals that many of them are pirates who had served on Captain Flint's ship, the ''Walrus'', with Silver leading them. They plan to mutiny after the salvage of the treasure, and to murder the captain and the few remaining loyal crew.

Arriving at the island, Jim joins the shore party and they begin to explore. He meets a marooned pirate named Ben Gunn, who is also a former member of Flint's crew. The mutineers arm themselves and take the ship while Smollett's loyal men take refuge in an abandoned stockade on the island. After a brief truce, the mutineers attack them, with casualties on both sides of the battle. Jim makes his way to the ''Hispaniola'' and cuts the ship from its anchor, drifting it along the ebb tide. He boards the ship and encounters the pirate Israel Hands, who had been injured in a drunken dispute with one of his companions. Hands helps Jim beach the schooner in the northern bay, then attempts to kill Jim with a knife, but Jim shoots him dead with two pistols.

Jim goes ashore and returns to the stockade, where he is horrified to find only Silver and the pirates. Silver tells Jim that when everyone found the ship was gone, Captain Flint's party had agreed to a truce whereby they take the map and allow the besieged party to leave. In the morning, Livesey arrives to treat the wounded and sick pirates and tells Silver to look out for trouble once he's found the site of the treasure. After a dispute over leadership, Silver and the others set out with the map, taking Jim along as a hostage. They find a skeleton with its arms oriented toward the treasure, unnerving the party. Scaring the crew, Ben Gunn shouts Captain Flint's last words from the forest, making the pirates believe that Flint's ghost is haunting the island. They eventually find the treasure cache, but it is empty. The pirates prepare to kill Silver and Jim, but they are ambushed by the officers along with Gunn. Livesey explains that Gunn had already found the treasure and taken it to his cave long ago. The expedition members load a portion of the treasure onto the ''Hispaniola'' and depart the island, with Silver as a prisoner. At their first port, in Spanish America, Silver steals a bag of money and escapes. The rest of them sail back to Bristol and divide up the treasure. Still, Jim says that there is more left on the island, but he will not undertake another voyage to claim it.

Background

Stevenson conceived the idea for the novel based on a map of an imaginary, romantic island which he drew with his stepson Lloyd Osbourne, during a holiday in Braemar, Scotland in the summer of 1881. He had clearly started work by 25 August, writing to a friend, "If this don't fetch the kids, why, they have gone rotten since my day. Will you be surprised to learn that it is about Buccaneers, that it begins in the Admiral Benbow public house on the Devon coast, that it's all about a map and a treasure and a mutiny and a derelict ship... It's quite silly and horrid fun – and what I want is the ''best'' book about Buccaneers that can be had".

Stevenson originally gave the book the title ''The Sea Cook''. One month after conceiving of the book, chapters began to appear in the pages of the ''Young Folks'' magazine. After completing fifteen or nineteen chapters rapidly, Stevenson was interrupted by illness; he left Scotland and continued working on the first draft near London, where he and his father discussed points of the tale, and his father suggested elements that he included. The novel eventually ran in seventeen weekly instalments from October 1, 1881, to January 28, 1882. The book was later republished as the novel ''Treasure Island'' and proved to be Stevenson's first financial and critical success. The Liberal politician William Ewart Gladstone, who served four terms as British Prime Minister between 1868 and 1894, was one of the book's biggest fans.

Two general types of sea novels were popular during the 19th century: the navy yarn, which places a capable officer in adventurous situations amid realistic settings and historical events, and the desert island romance, which features shipwrecked or marooned characters confronted by treasure-seeking pirates or angry natives. Around 1815, the latter genre became one of the most popular fictional styles in Great Britain, perhaps because of the philosophical interest in Rousseau and Chateaubriand's "noble savage". ''Treasure Island'' was a climax of this development. The growth of the desert island genre can be traced back to 1719 when Daniel Defoe's ''Robinson Crusoe'' was published. A century later, novels such as S. H. Burney's ''The Shipwreck'' (1816), and Sir Walter Scott's '' The Pirate'' (1822) continued to expand upon Defoe's classic. Other authors, in the mid-19th century, continued this trend, with works including James Fenimore Cooper's ''The Pilot'' (1823). During the same period, Edgar Allan Poe wrote " MS Found in a Bottle" (1833) and "The Gold-Bug" (1843). All of these works influenced Stevenson's end product.

Stevenson also consciously borrowed material from previous authors. In a July 1884 letter to Sidney Colvin, he wrote that "''Treasure Island'' came out of Kingsley's ''At Last'', where I got the Dead Man's Chest—and that was the seed—and out of the great Captain Johnson's '' History of the Notorious Pirates''". Stevenson also admits that he took the idea of Captain Flint's pointing skeleton from Poe's ''The Gold-Bug'' and he constructed Billy Bones' history from the "Money-Diggers" section ("Golden Dreams" in particular) of '' Tales of a Traveller'' by Washington Irving, one of his favorite writers.

Half of Stevenson's manuscripts are lost, including those of ''Treasure Island'', ''The Black Arrow'', and ''The Master of Ballantrae''. Stevenson's heirs sold his papers during World War I; many of his documents were auctioned off in 1918.

Characters

Main

* Jim Hawkins: The narrator of most of the novel. Jim is the son of an innkeeper near Bristol, England, and appears to be in his mid-teens. He is eager to go to sea and hunt for treasure. Jim consistently displays courage and heroism, but is also sometimes impulsive and impetuous. He exhibits increasing sensitivity and wisdom as the journey progresses.
*Long John Silver: The one-legged cook aboard the ''Hispaniola''. Silver is the secret leader of the pirates. He is deceitful and greedy, but also charismatic, and his physical and mental strength are impressive. He is kind toward Jim and appears genuinely fond of him. Silver was based in part on Stevenson's friend and mentor William Ernest Henley.
* Dr. David Livesey: A doctor and magistrate; he narrates a few chapters of the novel. He exhibits common sense and rationality, and is fair-minded, treating wounded pirates just as he does his own comrades. Some years prior to the events of the novel, he had participated in the Battle of Fontenoy, during which he was wounded in action.
*Captain Alexander Smollett: The captain of the ''Hispaniola''. He is savvy and is rightly suspicious of the crew that Trelawney hires. Smollett is a real professional, taking his job seriously and displaying skill as a negotiator. Smollett believes in rules and does not like Jim's disobedience, but later in the novel states that he and Jim shouldn't go to sea together again as Jim was too much of the born favourite for him.
* Squire John Trelawney: A wealthy landowner who arranges the voyage to the island. He is too trusting and is duped by Silver into hiring pirates as the ship's crew.
*Billy Bones: An old seaman who resides at the Admiral Benbow Inn. He used to be Flint's first mate, and is surly and rude. He exhorts Jim to be on the lookout for a one-legged man. A treasure map in his possession set the events of the novel in motion.
* Ben Gunn: A former member of Captain Flint's crew who was found on Treasure Island, having been marooned there by Flint's crew several years earlier. He is described as being "insane", at least partially, and has a craving for cheese.
**In the semi-official prequel story ''Porto Bello Gold'' by Arthur D. Howden Smith, Ben Gunn was the servant of captain Andrew "Rip-Rap" Murray, Flint's associate and the mastermind behind the capture of the treasure ship ''Santissima Trinidad'', whence the buried treasure was taken. Murray described Ben Gunn as a "half-wit" whom he kept as servant specifically because he considered him intellectually incapable of treachery. After Flint's crew killed Murray and overpowered his crew, Ben Gunn went to serve Flint and fled the ''Walrus'' in Savannah after Flint's death.
**According to ''The Adventures of Ben Gunn'', he was Nic Allardyce's servant and friend from back home.

Minor

* Alan: An honest sailor who is killed by the mutineers during the landing on the island and whose death scream is heard across the isle. The incident occurs just before Long John murders Tom.
* Allardyce: One of the six members of Flint's Crew who, after burying the treasure and silver and building the blockhouse on Treasure Island, are all killed by Flint, who returns to his ship alone. Allardyce's body is lined up by Flint as a compass marker to the cache.
**In ''Porto Bello Gold'', one sailor on Flint's ship is named "Tom Allardyce". A lanky fellow with rather long, yellow hair, he is an antagonistic ringleader of sailors opposing Flint in at least two "fo'c'sle councils". Flint thinks they may present him with the Black Spot; he eventually challenges Allardyce to bring six friends and bury the treasure together.
**According to ''The Adventures of Ben Gunn'', his first name was "Nic", he was surgeon on Flint's crew, and Ben Gunn was his servant and friend from back home.
* Job Anderson: The ship's boatswain and one of the leaders of the mutiny. He participates in the storming of the blockhouse and is killed by Gray while attacking Jim. He is probably one of Flint's old pirate hands, though this is never stated. Along with Hands and Merry, he tipped a Black Spot on Silver and forced Silver to start the mutiny before the treasure was found.
* Mr. Arrow: The first mate of the ''Hispaniola''. He is an alcoholic and is useless as a first mate. He disappears before they get to the island and his position is filled by Job Anderson. Silver had secretly given Mr. Arrow alcohol and he fell drunkenly overboard on a stormy night. In his BBC adaptation of 1977, John Lucarotti gives him the first name "Joshua". His first name was not stated in the novel.
* Black Dog: Formerly a member of Flint's pirate crew, later one of Pew's companions who visits the Admiral Benbow to confront Billy Bones. He is spotted by Jim in Silver's tavern and slips out to be chased by two of Silver's men (in order to maintain the ruse that Silver and his men are not associated with him). Two fingers are missing from his left hand.
*Pew: A vicious, deadly, and sinister blind beggar who served as a member of Flint's crew. Despite his blindness, he proves to be a dangerous adversary and can even be considered a ringleader amongst his fellow crewmen. He is the second messenger to approach Billy Bones and the one to deliver the Black Spot. He is trampled to death by the horses of revenue officers riding to assist Jim and his mother after the raid on their inn. Silver claims Pew spent his share of Flint's treasure at a rate of £1,200 per year, and that for two years until his accident at the "Admiral Benbow", he begged, stole, and murdered. Stevenson avoided predictability by making the two most fearsome characters a blind man and an amputee. In the play ''Admiral Guinea'' (1892), Stevenson gives him the full name "David Pew". Stevenson's novel ''Kidnapped'' (1886) also features a dangerous blind man.
**In ''Porto Bello Gold'', it is Pew who fatally stabs captain Murray, working in concert with Long John Silver. From the context, it seems that Silver means Pew when he addresses one man as "Ezra" just prior.
* Mr. Dance: Chief revenue officer (titled Supervisor) who ascends with his men upon the Admiral Benbow, driving out the pirates, and saving Jim Hawkins and his mother. He then takes Hawkins to see the squire and the doctor.
* Dogger: One of Mr. Dance's associates, who doubles Hawkins on his horse to the squire's house.
* Captain J. Flint: A pirate who was captain of a ship called the ''Walrus'', and who is dead before the events of the novel begin. In life he was the leader of the pirates and they refer to him often. He was the original possessor of the treasure, and buried it on the island. Long John Silver's parrot is named after him.
* Abraham Gray: A ship's carpenter's mate on the ''Hispaniola''. He is almost incited to mutiny but remains loyal to the Squire's side when asked to do so by Captain Smollett. He saves Hawkins' life by killing Job Anderson during an attack on the stockade, and he helps shoot the mutineers at the rifled treasure cache. He later escapes the island together with Jim Hawkins, Dr. Livesey, Squire Trelawney, Captain Smollett, Long John Silver, and Ben Gunn. He spends his part of the treasure on his education, marries, and becomes part owner of a full-rigged ship.
* Israel Hands: The ship's coxswain and Flint's old gunner. He tries to murder Jim Hawkins, who shoots him in self-defence.
* Mr. and Mrs. Hawkins: The parents of Jim Hawkins. Mr. Hawkins dies early in the story.
* John Hunter: A manservant of Squire Trelawney. Dr. Livesey considers him to be the most steady and capable of Livesey's servants to have in a fight. He accompanies Trelawney to the island but is later knocked unconscious in an attack on the stockade. He dies of his injuries while unconscious.
* John: A mutineer who is injured while trying to storm the blockhouse. Throughout the latter narrative he is primarily referred to by Hawkins as 'the man with the bandaged head' and ends up being killed at the rifled treasure cache.
* Dick Johnson: The youngest of the mutineers, who has a Bible. The pirates use one of its pages to make a Black Spot for Silver, only to have him predict bad luck on Dick for sacrilege. Soon becoming mortally ill with malaria, Dick ends up being marooned on the island after the deaths of George Merry and John.
* Richard Joyce: One of the manservants of Squire Trelawney who accompany the squire to the island, a mild-mannered valet inexperienced in firearms. He is shot through the head and killed by a mutineer during an attack on the stockade.
* George Merry: A mutinous and hostile member of Silver's crew, who disobeys orders and occasionally challenges Silver's authority. He launches the mutiny prematurely, forcing Long John to flee to the island with Jim as an improvised hostage. With Anderson and Hands, he forces Silver to attack the blockhouse instead of waiting for the treasure to be found. Later killed at the empty cache just as he is about to kill both Silver and Hawkins.
* Tom Morgan: An ex-pirate from Flint's old crew. He ends up marooned on the island with Dick and one other mutineer.
* O'Brien: A mutineer who survives the attack on the blockhouse and escapes. He is later killed by Israel Hands in a drunken fight on the ''Hispaniola''. He is referred to by Hawkins as the pirate 'with the red nightcap' throughout most of the narrative, until Hands reveals to Hawkins that the fellow was an Irishman named O'Brien.
* Tom Redruth: The gamekeeper of Squire Trelawney. He accompanies the Squire to the island but is shot and mortally wounded by the mutineers as the captain's party are relocating from the ship to the stockade.
* Tom: An honest sailor who is killed by Silver for refusing to join the mutiny.

Among other minor characters whose names are not revealed are the four pirates who were killed in an attack on the stockade along with Job Anderson; the pirate killed by the honest men minus Jim Hawkins before the attack on the stockade; the pirate killed by Ben the night before the attack on the stockade; the pirate shot by Squire Trelawney when aiming at Israel Hands, who later died of his injuries; and the pirate marooned on the island along with Tom Morgan and Dick.

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 were subsequently all 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 on board a ship travelling from Tenerife to London by the Ship's Cook and his gang. 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.

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 (1718–1722). Kidd buried treasure on Gardiners Island, though the booty was recovered by authorities soon afterwards.Adams, Cecil ''The Straight Dope''
Did pirates bury their treasure? Did pirates really make maps where "X marks the spot"?
5 October 2007
* 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 1800s 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.

Other allusions

* 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'', which Stevenson admired for its "better qualities." 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."Reed, Thomas L. 2006. ''The Transforming Draught: Jekyll and Hyde, Robert Louis Stevenson, and the Victorian Alcohol Debate mustache.'' pp. 71–73.

Treasure Island

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.
* 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."Where's Where" (1974) (Eyre Methuen, London)
* 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 jeweled 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'', and which he said "was the seed" for the phrase "Dead Man's Chest".David Cordingly. ''Under the Black Flag: The Romance and the Reality of Life Among the Pirates''. .Robert Louis Stevenson. "To Sidney Colvin. Late May 1884", in ''Selected Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson''
p. 263

* Small pond in Queen Street Gardens in Edinburgh, said to have been visible from Stevenson's bedroom window in Heriot Row."Brilliance of 'World's Child' will come alive at storytelling event"
, (''The Scotsman'', 20 October 2005).
* 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

HOME


Content is Copyleft
Website design, code, and AI is Copyrighted (c) 2014-2017 by Stephen Payne


Consider donating to Wikimedia



As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases