Flint and Silver: A Prequel to Treasure Island

Afterword

I wrote Flint and Silver to resolve the questions that Robert Louis Stevenson left unanswered in Treasure Island, one of the best-loved classics of English literature, but one which delivers a story plucked out of history like a carriage from the middle of a train. Questions are begged from end to end of the book: How did Long John lose his leg? Where did he get the parrot? Who was the black woman that he married? Who was the hideous Captain Flint? And above all, the question of questions that surpasses all others: Why did the pirates bury their treasure?

This is a puzzle that bellowed and roared for explanation because the concept of buried treasure has so deeply penetrated our mythology that almost nobody sees a question there at all, despite the fact that there is a profound contradiction in the idea of pirates burying their treasure.

Burial means safe storage. It means planning for the future. But pirates had no future. They did not look forward to retirement in Eastbourne with a service flat, BUPA and a plasma TV. They lived fast and died young with the navies of at least three countries trying to catch them and hang them. So when they got hold of some money they blew it on sex, alcohol and gluttony, and then went out and got some more money, and so on and so on, until the hangman got hold of them.

Faced with these questions, and knowing that Robert Louis Stevenson was not going to answer them, I decided to do so on his behalf by writing a series of books about what happened before Treasure Island, and hoping that, if I did it well enough, he might forgive me should we meet in some other place.

To increase my chances of forgiveness, I read and re-read Treasure Island. I went through it page by page, taking notes and producing a cross-referenced file of information with which my book should be in harmony. If Flint and Silver is to be a "prequel" it should contain nothing irreconcilable with Treasure Island. This does not mean that I never departed from — or even contradicted — some of Stevenson's detail, but that I did my best never to do so in ignorance, or without good reason. For instance, Treasure Island is a children's book, because Stevenson wrote it for his thirteen-year-old step-son Lloyd Osbourne, who wanted no women in the story: a perfectly reasonable sentiment for a thirteen-year-old, but I am older than that and I write no books without women and the delights and sorrows that go with them; so my work is not for children.

Conversely, I was absolutely true to Stevenson in correcting a false impression, universally held, of Long John Silver himself. Almost everyone knows Robert Newton's incomparable representation:

"Ah-harr, Jim lad!" of Long John. But who knows that this boozy, greasy, squinting creature is nothing like the Long John that Stevenson created? The real Long John was, in Stevenson's words:

… very tall and strong, with a face as big as a ham. Plain and pale but intelligent and smiling… clean and pleasant-tempered.

Of all the actors who have played Silver, the closest, in my opinion, was Charlton Heston, and even he was too old at the time. If you want to picture Long John, think of a young Charlton Heston, swinging a broadsword as he did in El Cid.

I kept Silver's speech and character as close as possible to Stevenson, though stressing Silver's belief that he was a "gentleman of fortune" and not a pirate. But I plead guilty to making him younger than Stevenson did. He imagined Silver as middle-aged, while I've re-incarnated him in the prime of manhood. Likewise I've romanced Silver's lady, Selena, very considerably. Stevenson refers to her as an "old negress" and she never makes an appearance in his book, whereas my Selena is young and delectable, for she is the heroine, and must be lovely, as an irrefutable requirement of good story-telling.

Flint, the other major character, was long dead in Treasure Island and Stevenson gives no clue to his appearance, though his many references to Flint point to a monster in the shadows. "He was the bloodthirstiest buccaneer that ever sailed," says Squire Trelawney. "Blackbeard was a child to Flint. The Spaniards were so prodigiously afraid of him, that, I tell you, sir, I was sometimes proud he was an Englishman." Here was the opportunity to create something special, and I have tried. He could not be a simple brute but someone with glittering talents as well as psychotic menace. Hence Joe Flint with his holy-sadist father, his lightning reactions, his amoral cunning, his beautiful clothes, his gleaming smile… and his little problem with women. Flint, of course is the answer to the great question "why was the treasure buried?" It was buried for Flint, to be exhumed by Flint, for Flint's exclusive use, and perhaps with Billy Bones allowed to carry the weight of it.

Poor, loyal Billy Bones. He is a brute: a thumping, bruising brute, just as Stevenson described him, though younger and bigger. But the notebook and quadrant in his chest in Treasure Island showed that he was a literate, numerate brute and capable of plotting a course. So I made him a master's mate. He was no mere "hand before the mast" and he was much wronged by his idol and master. Left to himself in the Royal Navy, Billy Bones would have been a perfectly decent ship's officer, no worse than many others with thick boots and heavy fists.

Further characters likewise spring from Stevenson. I have described the flogging of Ben Gunn which began his descent into insanity. Blind Pew, who terrified me as a child, I made into "Mad Pew": sinister and peculiar even before he lost his sight. Israel Hands in Treasure Island was the drunken thug who chased Jim Hawkins up the mast with a knife. But Stevenson also said that Hands was Flint's gunner, and a gunner was a senior officer, responsible for guns, carriages, shot and powder. He kept written records of these expensive stores, and he held the keys to the magazine, where a single act of carelessness could destroy the entire ship. Apologies to Stevenson, but this is inconsistent, and my Israel Hands is a sober and thoughtful man. He is Silver's chief ally, and a considerable expert in the use of the nine-pounder gun.

My favourite character is Cap'n Flint, the parrot. I had almost finished writing the book when, by chance, I met a parrot at an antiques fair in Staffordshire. It was a huge bird, sitting on the shoulder of a lady — one of the traders — nuzzling her ear and preening her hair, taking a strand in its beak and gently running down the strand towards its end. Later I read of Dr Irene Pepperberg whose research suggests that parrots have an intelligence equal to that of the higher primates, with the bonus that they can speak. Thus I learned that the fantasised intelligence I had given to Cap'n Flint was perfectly reasonable. Parrots really are that clever. And they can crack Brazil nuts in their beaks, or bite off Black Dog's fingers.

Other characters such as Captain Springer, Midshipman Hastings and Midshipman Povey are entirely mine and are as true to the period as I can make them. Thus midshipmen were sometimes very young. Nelson famously went to sea at twelve and his contemporary, William Dillon, states in his memoirs[1] that he went to sea aboard HMS Saturn in 1790 aged nine and a half years.

Research is vital to historical novels but it should never show, because nobody wants a history lesson while reading for pleasure. Nonetheless, here are a few points that might be of interest:

Piracy in the West Indies flourished in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, when it was practised under every shade of legality from official, state-licensed "privateering", through bribery of the authorities, to outright criminality.[2] Among this varied company there were indeed some who considered themselves "gentlemen of fortune" and sailed under articles. Long John would have been pleased to know that a set of articles — those of Bartholomew Roberts — is on the internet today for all to see.[3]

Likewise there really was a pirate by the name of England,[4] namesake of my England who tried to teach Long John the art of navigation. But the real England died in 1720, and in historic fact the various royal navies, especially the British, French and Spanish, had stamped out much of West Indian piracy by the middle of the eighteenth century. In earlier times piracy had flourished because the governments who paid for navies baulked at enforcing their laws on a raw frontier half a world away. Suppressing piracy meant sending out many ships for long periods, and politicians doubtless wept and groaned at the cost of this until the pain of piracy grew unbearable, which it did in the early years of the eighteenth century when such fabulous wealth was generated in the region, especially from sugar, that no government would share it with pirates.

But Stevenson set Treasure Island in the second half of the eighteenth century, as can be calculated from the principal date in the book: 20th July 1754, written by Billy Bones on the treasure map. My guess is that the map was at least five years old when Jim Hawkins found it, placing the action of Treasure Island in the 1760s. Probably Stevenson did this because his story was about the consequences of past piracy: buried treasure, long since lost.

A final word on the real captain England and those whom he exemplifies: he was regarded as a gentle pirate because he used torture only when necessary, other means of persuasion having failed. Most of the rest were not so kind, and all those persons who like horror — real horror — should study contemporary accounts of these pirates.

And so to the treasure itself…

Long John's estimate was that the treasure was worth about £800,000 in the mighty golden pounds of 1752, representing a truly enormous sum in the miserable paper pounds of the twenty-first century. It was worth all the more in the eighteenth century because then so much was bought on credit via written promises to pay; a system even worse than plastic cards in the slippery ease with which it led into debt and inability to pay. Thus ready gold or silver was warmly welcomed.

Turning to actual figures, Research Paper 99/20 of the House of Commons Library February 1999 calculates that prices rose by a factor of 118 between 1750 and 1998, which seems seriously too low a figure, reflecting the fact that politicians now, as in the eighteenth century, should never be trusted with money. But even that dubious figure would turn Silver's estimate into £94.4 million.

Substituting honesty for statistics, an able seaman RN was paid 24 shillings (£1.20) per month in the 1750s, while his modern equivalent, a trained rating, is paid £15,500 to £26,000 per year, say £20,000 on average, or roughly £1,666 a month — approximately 1,400 times inflation.

Similarly, a dockyard clerk, a middle-ranking, white-collar professional, earned £30–40 per year in the late eighteenth century, while an equivalent, middle-grade, modern administrator might reasonably expect something like £30,000- 40,000.

Factors such as tax and the relative cost of manufactured goods versus services have turned dizzy cartwheels over the past two hundred and fifty years, but we will not go far wrong in adding three noughts and assuming that, in modern money, the treasure was worth something like £800,000,000.

Which brings us up to date so far as the value goes. But how do we reckon the date?

On Friday, 15th October 1582, enlightened Catholic Europe adopted the new Gregorian calendar proposed by the Calabrian astronomer Aloysius Lilius, and decreed by His Holiness Pope Gregory XIII, after whom it is named.

This calendar corrected faults in the previous Julian calendar, which had caused natural events like the equinoxes (twice-yearly occasions when the day and night are of equal duration) to "drift backwards" through successive Julian years, occurring later and later as each year passed.

The change to the Gregorian Calendar required that Thursday, 4th October 1582 be followed by the newly reckoned Friday, 15th October.

Protestant Europe, including England and its overseas possessions, fiercely resisted anything Catholic — including the Gregorian Calendar — until the stupidity of this policy became too gross to be ignored.

Finally, grudgingly, one hundred and seventy years late, and with riots by the ignorant, howling:

"Give us back our eleven days!" the British adopted the Gregorian Calendar, with the result that Wednesday, 2nd September 1752 was followed by Thursday, 14th September.

Events described in this book — particularly the burying of the treasure — take place both before and after the switchover date. To avoid confusion, all dates are given in the Julian, or old-style reckoning.

This map, made in 1689 by Captain Santos Almeida of the Portuguese Navy, guided Captain Springer to the Island in 1749. It gives the Island's features their original names, and notes the compass variation. It also gives latitude and longitude plus sailing instructions to locate the Island: information later removed by someone else.

The map also gives several features bearing on future adventures of John Silver and Joe Flint — features integral to Pieces of Eight: the sequel to Flint and Silver.