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Yo Ho, Yo Ho, A Pirate's Life For Me
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in: Non-canon articles, Non-canon books, Real-world reference books, Reference works

Treasure Island

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Jack nc "Truth? No truth at all."
This article is non-canon.
This article covers a subject that has been deemed non-canon by either the author or the Pirates of the Caribbean licensees, and thus should not be taken as a part of the "real" Pirates of the Caribbean world.
Walt Disney Treasure Island

Walt Disney holds a copy of Treasure Island: The Story of the Film.

"I have always been fascinated by 'Treasure Island' ever since my boyhood, and I had the Robert Louis Stevenson adventure in mind for 14 years as one of the most exciting prospects in my production plans."
―Walt Disney[src]

Treasure Island (originally titled The Sea Cook: A Story for Boys) 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.[1]

Plot[]

Jim Hawkins lives with his parents in the Admiral Benbow inn near Bristol, England, in the eighteenth century. As the story opens, an old sailor named Billy Bones comes to their inn. He bid Jim lookout for a one-legged sailor.

A few months through his stay, he suddenly succumbs to a stroke. Meanwhile, he is presented with a black spot (an official pirate verdict of guilt or judgment) and narrates to Jim that his old shipmates are after his sea chest. Intrigued, Jim, accompanied by his mother, opens the chest to find the gold hidden at the bottom and some papers wrapped in an oilcloth. In the meantime, they hear the approaching footsteps and leave with the documents before Billy’s pursuers ransack the inn.

Jim meets Dr Livesey and Squire Trelawney, safely escaping the pirates, the contents he has snatched from the sea chest. They recognize it as a map and logbook of a huge treasure buried by the infamous Captain Flint on a distant island. Excited, Trelawney immediately sets out to plan an expedition in his ship, the Hispaniola. He hires crew members and appoints Captain Alexander Smollett to guide them through their navigation. The ship sets sail for Treasure Island, and when they were about to reach the island, Jim overhears Long John Silver’s conversation and realizes that most of their crew members are none other than the pirates who once sailed with Flint.

Jim shares the matters with the trio, Captain Smollett, Dr Livesey, Squire Trelawney, about Silver and his plan for a mutiny. When they reach the island, Captain Smollett devises a plan and sends most of the mutineers off the ship on the pretext of giving them leisure time onshore. On impulse, Jim sneaks into the boat and goes ashore. The moment they reach the shore, he hides at a safe distance. Unfortunately, after witnessing Silver murdering a sailor who refuses to join the mutiny, he runs further into the island. In the heart of the island, he comes across a man named Ben Gunn, marooned by an unsuccessful treasure hunting crew three years earlier.

On the other hand, Smollett and his men leave the ship and shelter in a stockade Captain Flint's pirates have built on the shore years ago. Eventually, Jim also joins them in the stockade. Soon, Silver visits and attempts to negotiate with Captain Smollett, who in turn denies a meeting with him. As expected, the pirates attack the stockade the same day, and the captain gets wounded.

Taken by his impulse, Jim sneaks away from the stockade in search of Ben’s handmade boat hidden in the woods. When he finds the boat, he sails out to the anchored ship and cuts the anchor rope, with the hope of running the ship aground and depriving the pirates of a means of escape. He kills one of the guards and gets wounded in the process but successfully cempletes his mission.

Jim returns to the stockade only to find the pirates occupy it. Moreover, Jim was flabbergasted when Silver tells him that the captain has given the treasure map and other things in exchange for their lives. However, Jim realizes that Silver is having trouble managing his men, as they accuse him of treachery. Thus, Silver forms an alliance with Jim and requests him to pretend to be a hostage, in turn, help each other survive. Despite his clever plan, the crew informs him that he has been deposed as their commander. Desperate, Silver had to show them the map to gain control over the crew.

Appeased by the sight of the map, the crew set out to the treasure site. But to their bewilderment, they find it being excavated and the treasure removed already. Dr Livesey, Ben Gunn, appears on the scene and starts to fire at the pirates to add chaos to the situation. Scared, the crew flees in various directions, while Jim and Silver are directed by the others to Ben’s cave. To their surprise, they come to know that it was Ben who excavated the treasure.

They spend three days carrying the loot to the ship and decide to set sail for home. They encounter some of the mutineers. Still, they were left marooned despite their pleas. Silver, who accompanies them, sneaks off the ship one night with a portion of the treasure and is never heard from again. Others in the ship happily settle with their portion of the treasure. Jim, the novel’s protagonist, swears off treasure-hunting forever and suffers from nightmares about the sea and gold coins.

Media[]

Illustrations[]

Appearances[]

Characters[]

  • James "Jim" Hawkins
  • Jim Hawkins' father
  • Jim Hawkins' mother
  • Billy Bones
  • Captain Flint (Mentioned only)
  • Black Dog
  • Blind Pew
  • Mr. Dance
  • Dogger
  • Squire John Trelawney
  • Dr. David Livesey
  • Captain Alexander Smollett
  • Mr. Arrow
  • Mr. Blandly
  • Long John Silver
  • Job Anderson
  • Dick Johnson
  • Israel Hands
  • Ben Gunn
  • Tom Morgan
  • Abraham Gray
  • John Hunter
  • Richard Joyce
  • Thomas Redruth
  • O’Brien
  • George Merry
  • George II of Great Britain (Mentioned only)
  • Blackbeard (Mentioned only)
  • Edward Hawke (Mentioned only)
  • Edward England (Mentioned only)
  • Bartholomew Roberts (Mentioned only)
  • Howell Davis (Mentioned only)
  • Davy Jones (Mentioned only)
  • Darby McGraw (Mentioned only)
  • Allardyce (skeleton)
  • Devil (Mentioned only)

Creatures and species[]

  • Parrot
  • Goat (Mentioned only)
  • Dog (Mentioned only)
  • Lion (Mentioned only)

Objects and weapons[]

Locations[]

  • Great Britain
  • Caribbean Sea
    • Treasure Island
      • Spy-glass Hill
      • Main-mast Hill
      • Fore-mast Hill
      • Capt. Kidd’s Anchorage
      • Skeleton Island
      • North Inlet
      • Rum Cove
  • Madagascar (Mentioned only)
  • Goa (Mentioned only)
  • Malabar (Mentioned only)
  • Surinam (Mentioned only)
  • Providence (Mentioned only)
  • Portobello (Mentioned only)
  • Savannah (Mentioned only)
  • Trinidad (Mentioned only)
    • Port of Spain (Mentioned only)
  • Corso Castle (Mentioned only)

Organizations and titles[]

Ships[]

  • Hispaniola
  • Walrus (Mentioned only)
  • Cassandra (Mentioned only)
  • Royal Fortune (Mentioned only)
  • Viceroy of the Indies (Mentioned only)

Miscellanea[]

Influence on other works[]

Connection with Disney[]

  • Treasure Island, a 1950 Walt Disney Studios film based on the novel, notable for being the first screen version in colour and Walt Disney's first completely live-action film without any animation. It was also the first Disney film shot in England, in locations off the Cornish coast and Falmouth Bay. Directed by Byron Haskin, Treasure Island starred Bobby Driscoll as Jim Hawkins and Robert Newton as Long John Silver.[2] The first on-screen image ever to appear in an all-live-action Walt Disney Studio feature was none other than a closeup of the skull-and-crossbones Jolly Roger flag in the classic 1950 version of Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island.[3] A sequel to this version was made (but not by Disney) in 1954, entitled Long John Silver, which spawned a miniseries, both of which also starred Robert Newton reprising the titular role.
  • The northern part of Adventure Isle in Adventureland at Disneyland Paris is named L'Ile au Trésor — Treasure Island. It contains a mountain called Spyglass Hill, where one of the caves is named Ben Gunn's Cave.
Discovery Treasure Island

The entrance to Treasure Island.

  • Discovery Island is an island located on the property of Walt Disney World Resort in the city of Bay Lake, Florida. Between 1974 and 1999, it was an attraction opened to guests, who could observe its many species of animals. Disney originally named it "Treasure Island", but later renamed it Discovery Island in 1978. It currently sits abandoned, but can be seen by any watercraft in Bay Lake.
  • Return to Treasure Island, a 1986 TV series which Disney Channel contracted the UK ITV broadcaster HTV Wales to produce. The 10-part series starred Brian Blessed as Long John Silver, Christopher Guard as Jim Hawkins and Kenneth Colley as Ben Gunn.
  • Muppet Treasure Island, a 1996 adaptation of the novel produced by The Jim Henson Company and released by Walt Disney Pictures and Buena Vista Pictures as the fifth theatrical film in The Muppets franchise. In addition to the Muppet performers in various roles, like Kermit the Frog as Captain Abraham Smollett, Muppet Treasure Island starred Tim Curry as Long John Silver and introduced Kevin Bishop as Jim Hawkins. The film features an instrumental score by Hans Zimmer, with additional music by Nick Glennie-Smith, as well as the songs "Shiver My Timbers" and "Sailing for Adventure" written by pop songwriters Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil.
  • Treasure Planet, a 2002 animated film distributed by Walt Disney Pictures and Buena Vista Pictures as the 43rd Disney animated feature film. The third Disney adaptation of the novel, Treasure Planet is also the third science fiction retelling of the story in an outer space setting, following Планетата на съкровищата (1982) and the miniseries Treasure Island in Outer Space (1987). Treasure Planet features the voices of Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Jim Hawkins and Brian Murray as John Silver, as well as Martin Short as B.E.N., a robot based on Ben Gunn, and Corey Burton as Onus, the lookout in the crew of the RLS Legacy. Animation Story was credited to director Ron Clements and John Musker along with screenwriters Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio. On a column at Wordplay, Rossio later argued the filmmakers made a crucial mistake turning Jim Hawkins into an adolescent. "Treasure Island, the book, is a boy's adventure, about a young cabin boy who matches wits with a crew of bloodthirsty pirates. All of the key scenes are made more dramatic by the fact that it's a young kid who is in danger... Treasure Planet made the kid into a young man. Which dilutes the drama of all the situations, start to finish... Instead of being an amazing and impressive kid, he became a petulant unimpressive teen."[4] Rossio would bring this criticism up in the annotations for his screenplay draft for Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, specifically in regards to the character "Cora" who was intended to be a child, and distinctive from Nadirah and the Sea Widow.[5]

Connection with Pirates of the Caribbean[]

Walt Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean[]

  • In the 2006 revamp of the ride, the long-anonymous island port was officially named Isla Tesoro. The Spanish translation of Treasure Island is La isla del tesoro.

Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl[]

  • In making Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, Treasure Island was one of many inspirations behind making the film. Some of the filmmakers make note of this, like producer Jerry Bruckheimer regarding the 1950 Walt Disney Studio feature.[6] It was also noted that history has a strange way of turning full circle as 53 years later, it took the very same studio's first Pirates of the Caribbean movie to spectacularly reinvent and reinvigorate a moribund genre which once again delighted millions.[3]
  • One thing screenwriters Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio took from their experience on Treasure Planet, was the simple premise of, "Is Long John Silver a delightful Falstaffian character or a contemptible villain?" That idea was something they carried into Captain Jack Sparrow.[7]
  • Hector Barbossa's pet monkey, named "Jack" after Jack Sparrow, is a reference to Long John Silver's pet parrot Captain Flint. Both animals are named after their owner's former captain.[8]
  • The 1911 edition of Treasure Island featured a series of illustrations by N. C. Wyeth. A selection of Wyeth's illustrations for the novel were included in an Image Gallery titled "Inspirations" found in the The Curse of the Black Pearl 2-disc DVD release, among other home video releases relating to the film.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Jack Sparrow[]

Silverback & Louis

Silverback and Left-Foot Louis orchestrate a mutiny.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest[]

"There's also the research phase. You start to think—what are key images? What are key ideas? What are key things to reference? In Pirates you start thinking, 'There was a black spot in Treasure Island. Can we use a black spot? If we did use a black spot, what would be our version of it?' You don't really know where it goes in the story yet, but if it sounds like a cool thing then it's in the mix. Then you think, 'There's a song, 'Fifteen Men on a Dead Man's Chest.' What is a dead man's chest? What if there was a chest? Is it a chest of treasure or is there something else in the chest? What might be in there?' There could be a huge number of ideas like that. Then what starts to happen is some ideas start to connect to other ideas. The ones that don't connect unfortunately fall away, no matter how cool they are. But the ones that do connect start to suggest story characterization, and the rest of it."
―Terry Rossio[src]

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End[]

  • Jack Sparrow's last scene may be inspired by the ending scene of the Treasure Island 1990 film adaption where Long John Silver sails away with a sack of Captain Flint's treasure in a little boat.

Pirates of the Caribbean: The Visual Guide and The Complete Visual Guide[]

  • In the "Foreword by Jerry Bruckheimer" pages, Bruckheimer wrote about how Treasure Island was one of his favorite pirate films as a kid.[16]
  • There is a section titled "Yo Ho Ho And A Bottle of Rum" which covers drinking being one of the most popular of pirate pleasures, and like all pirates, Jack Sparrow believes that "rum gets you through times of no money better than money gets you through times of no rum."[17][16]

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides[]

"Back in the old days, an actor like Robert Newton playing Long John Silver in 'Treasure Island' would have spent the whole shoot with these legs strapped up to his back and tried to avoid letting people seeing his foot sticking out the back. But from the nature of the script, and the maneuverability that I would need, you can’t run with your leg strapped up like that."
―Geoffrey Rush[src]
  • Hector Barbossa begins wearing a wooden peg leg where a real one used to be, revealed to have been lost in an off-screen encounter with Blackbeard. Barbossa is feared as an omen of death and referred to as "the one legged man" by Blackbeard and his daughter Angelica, which is a parallel to Billy Bones having feared John Silver and ominously referred to him by the same moniker. Regarding this change in Barbossa, actor Geoffrey Rush noted, "In the 18th century, they basically got you very drunk, sawed your leg off and replaced it with a bit of wood from an old piano or something. Back in the old days, an actor like Robert Newton playing Long John Silver in 'Treasure Island' would have spent the whole shoot with these legs strapped up to his back and tried to avoid letting people seeing his foot sticking out the back. But from the nature of the script, and the maneuverability that I would need, you can’t run with your leg strapped up like that."[18] Rush initially explored the idea of strapping his real leg up to his back and out of sight for the whole shoot so that he could then play Barbossa while wearing an actual wooden leg. He worked with a professional prosthetic guy in Australia, and hoped they'd be able to do it. But Rush added, "He told me "You know, it takes contemporary amputees about 18 months to 2 years to retrain their minds to find balance and equilibrium. Because you're not standing. You've got a ghost leg," Rush stated. "So I went to Rob Marshall and Penny Rose, the costume designer, and said 'I'll act the leg.' And everyone was in agreement. They said 'We'll give you a blue stocking to wear on that leg which the FX guys can then remove later in post-production."[19]

Disney Pirates: The Definitive Collector's Anthology[]

  • The book delves behind-the-scenes across ninety years of Disney film, television, and park history, specifically with pirates as a source of great popular entertainment. Treasure Island was one such example, as the book covers Walt Disney's very first all live-action feature film in 1950, the non-Disney sequel Long John Silver, the non-Disney TV series The Adventures of Long John Silver, which all starred Robert Newton. The book also covered Muppet Treasure Island and Treasure Planet.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales[]

  • Terry Rossio references Treasure Island and Treasure Planet in the annotations for his screenplay draft for Dead Men Tell No Tales:[5]
    • A character named "Cora" who was intended to be a ten-year-old child, and distinctive from Nadirah and the Sea Widow. Rossio noted the urge on the part of various production entities to cast a young woman or age the character upwards, comparing to what was done with Jim Hawkins on Disney's Treasure Planet or Dave Sutler "the Apprentice" in the 2010 film The Sorcerer's Apprentice, to cite examples of films where the kid-adult relationship was distorted into a young adult-adult relationship.[5]
    • The scene with Cora hiding behind a shelf while overhearing Captain Benbow and McNally, the owner of the shop McNally & Sons Chart House. The set-up here, a little kid hiding and overhearing adults speaking of adult issues, may evoke shades of Jim Hawkins in the apple barrel.[5]
    • A character named Captain (later Admiral) John Benbow is noted as a reference to the Admiral Benbow Inn, where young Jim Hawkins worked and where Blind Pew showed up to give the Black Spot to the Old Sea Dog. Robert Lewis Stevenson based the name on the real John Benbow (10 March 1653 – 4 November 1702), whose fame and success earned him public notoriety and a promotion to Admiral. He was involved in an incident during the Action of August 1702, where a number of his captains refused to support him while commanding a squadron of ships. Benbow instigated the trial and later imprisonment or execution of a number of the captains involved. These events contributed to his notoriety, and led to many references to him in popular culture.[5]
  • One of the concept artworks for Dead Men Tell No Tales shows a pirate ship called the Black Dog, possibly named after a character from the book.

Pirates of the Caribbean (Joe Books Ltd)[]

Sea of Thieves: A Pirate's Life[]

  • A phantom pirate named Black Dog Briar appears in the video game expansion.

Trivia[]

Sources[]

External links[]

Notes and references[]

  1. ↑ David Cordingly. Under the Black Flag: The Romance and the Reality of Life Among the Pirates (1995); p. 7
  2. ↑ Treasure Island (Film) - D23
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 POTC2 Presskit
  4. ↑ Wordplayer.com: WORDPLAY/Columns/47. "The One Hundred Million Dollar Mistake" by Terry Rossio
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 P5 Annotations by Terry Rossio
  6. ↑ Pirates of the Caribbean production notes, accessed Dec 9, 2006
  7. ↑ An Interview with Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio, writers of Pirates of the Caribbean - DVDizzy.com
  8. ↑ The Curse of the Black Pearl Audio Commentary with Screenwriters Stuart Beattie, Ted Elliott & Terry Rossio and Jay Wolpert
  9. ↑ Jack Sparrow: The Siren Song, p. 2
  10. ↑ Jack Sparrow: Silver, pp. 48-50
  11. ↑ Dead Man's Chest - Audio Commentary with Screenwriters Ted Elliott & Terry Rossio
  12. ↑ WORDPLAY/Archives/"Nine Pieces of Eight" by Terry Rossio
  13. ↑ Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (junior novelization), p. 34
  14. ↑ Dead Man's Chest 2006 production draft
  15. ↑ WORDPLAY/Archives/"Ends of the Earth" by Terry Rossio at Wordplay Archives
  16. ↑ 16.0 16.1 Pirates of the Caribbean: The Complete Visual Guide
  17. ↑ Pirates of the Caribbean: The Visual Guide
  18. ↑ POTC4 Presskit
  19. ↑ JHM: Geoffrey Rush isn't rushing to exit Disney's "Pirates of the Caribbean" film franchise - Archived
  20. ↑ 2019 Interview with Chris Schweizer
  21. ↑ Pirates of the Caribbean 4 at Halona Cove, Hawaii - YouTube
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