202. Long John Silver: The Truth Behind Treasure Island

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0:28Hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnon. And me, William Turinpool. We're just all giddy because we like this subject, Pirates, and thank you for liking it too. We've had so many nice things said about it. We have been looking at real-life pirates, as you know if you've been following the series. Blackbeard, William Kidd, Henry Avery, Boo, here's terrible Henry Avery. He's my favourite. He's your favourite. Not in real life, but it's the best story. It was an extraordinary story. I mean, he's an appalling human being. Appalling. Appalling human being, but what a tale. It's a good story, but I mean, you know, still, I'm sort of team William Kidd.

1:01William Kidd was free William Kidd. I was going to get t-shirts. Luke gives every bit as bad as the rest of them, I'm quite sure. Not on the Henry Avery scale of shit. But anyway, look, today we're going to be discussing probably the pirates that you know better, but the ones that were not real, or were they? The fictional pirates, the ones that you've watched on screen or you've read in children's books or you've seen pictures of. On pantos. Through Disney and Panto. Oh, yes, you have. You know you have. Oh, no, you haven't. Your timing is, I mean, exquisite. But it's extraordinary how this subject of all subjects should become the stuff of pundits.

1:42Because as we saw last time with Henry Avery, these are very gruesome stories. These are not sort of happy children's stories. These are stories of rape, pillage, looting and robbery. And yet we've managed somehow to, as we'll hear today, wave a magic wand over them and turn them into things that every kid wants to hear. I mean, honestly, hand on heart, I did tee you up to tell everyone who we're talking about, since you haven't. We are, by the way, with our exquisite comedic timing available for Panto in 2025. Let me just tell you, I mean, I really like Captain Hook out of all of the characters in Peter Pan.

2:15I think there's more Hook in me than anyone else. So Captain Hook is one we're going to address, and J.M. Barrie, and how did he get his inspiration? But you're starting us off with arguably the most famous fictional pirate of all time. Long John Silver. Step, clunk, step, clunk, step the man with the wooden leg. It is Long John Silver. So tell me, first of all, why did you choose Long John Silver? Why does he appeal? Well, Long John Silver is something that is deep in my childhood. I was lucky enough to grow up in a tiny Scottish seaside town called North Berwick. And from my earliest childhood, I remember my grandmother pointing out to me the house where Robbie Lewis Stevenson used to come on his holidays.

3:00I think he was in Edinburgh. And in fact, I remember the house in Edinburgh because I think I even went to children's parties in that house where Robbie Lewis Stevenson grew up. So he was very much around long before I really knew who he was. He was someone that was very much talked about in the place I grew up. And the story always was. And there were different versions of the story. I always heard, first of all, that it was the Bass Rock that was the base of Treasure Island. And looking now online and going down lots of rabbit holes, it seems it was two islands along the island of Phidra, which is off a lovely beach called Yellow Craig.

3:33And if anyone is anywhere near the East Lothian coast anytime soon, go and walk along Yellow Craig, which is happy memories for a lot of my childhood treasure hunts, which again were inspired by Treasure Island. And this still goes on. We have in North Berwick still every summer a Robbie Lewis Stevenson Festival and there's treasure hunts inevitably in maps. Does everyone dress as a pirate? And all the kids are dressed as pirates. And I never quite believed it, to be honest, because North Berwick is as sort of clean and un-piratey as anywhere has ever been. It's a lovely place. It's one of the most gorgeous, gorgeous of all Scots.

4:08Seaside has recently voted by the Sunday Times, the prettiest town in Britain and the best place to live in Britain. and nothing could be less threatening than North Berwick with its sort of pubs and chippies and seaside mission and all this sort of stuff going on on the beach. But allegedly this is where the idea percolated in Robbie Louis Stevenson's childhood, going on canoe trips along the coast, going crabineering, looking for crabs on North Berwick Beach and having the same childhood as I had, which is a lovely and strange thought, but I wish I'd come up with the idea for the Treasure Islands something as lucrative as that.

4:44I mean, look at the bright side. Glass half full. This pod would never have happened if you were rich enough not to care. Quite true. A grateful nation. So are you starting with Robert Lucey or do you want to tell us a little bit about the other man who is also a great pirate producer? Let's start with Daniel Defoe, exactly. I think Daniel Defoe is the daddy of all pirate stories, one might say. And he sort of predates everybody. Born in 1660, an English writer, not Scottish, one of the few Scottish people, actually, we've discovered this in our romp around the high seas with pirates, is that many of them, if not most of the ones we've talked about, have some Scottish connection.

5:22But Defoe, very much an English writer, because his was a seminal work, Robinson Crusoe, which sets the archetype for so much pirate fiction in the future. You know the story of Robinson Crusoe, I'm sure, but it is a man who has been stranded on an island. He is left entirely on his own, and he's sort of to stop himself going mad and waiting year upon year with his eyes upon the horizon, waiting for somebody to rescue him. He learns to, and with terrible false starts, build homes for himself, build huts for himself, make clothes for himself, survive on this island, transforming coconuts into all manners of things.

5:59And if you've seen Cast Away with Tom Hanks, very much in the spirit of Robinson Crusoe, again, a man playing the survival game to try to stop himself going mad. And Robinson Crusoe was such a seminal work. But, William Dharunpoul, did you know, all great fiction is based, as we are finding, on real life. And so there was a real castaway that grabbed the world's attention. And we mentioned him last week, Alexander Selkirk. I think we need to talk a little bit more about him rather than just mention him. So just remind us how he came up last week. He came up last week in the Henry Avery episode and just remind us why he came up in the Henry Avery episode.

6:37Because there is a story which is not verified that Alexander Selkirk, the castaway who was the inspiration for Robinson Crusoe, was a ship member under the captain, Henry Avery, on the fancy. On his very masculinely named, the fancy. Yes, that's right. I think you aren't realizing the full resonance of the word fancy, which has a romantic sort of... I swear on all that is holy, all I can think of is him on a fondant fancy, that there's this pink iced cake in the water, which is blasting enemies. Well, as we know, Henry Avery was not one of pink fondant that had a rather harsher edge to his steel than that.

7:15And apparently, anyway, according to some historians, Alexander Selkirk, the castaway who was a real character, did spend time on Henry Avery's ship until he left it. Okay, all right. Beautifully summed up. Exceptional stuff. Hugely accurate. Can I tell you a bit more about Alexander Selkirk, though? Because he's really interesting. He's one of those same people who starts off as a Royal Navy officer and then becomes a Scottish privateer. And it is, you know, that transition between being legit and non-legit on the high seas is a very easy one to make. Which is so flexible, as we've found, yeah.

7:51Very, very flexible, particularly if your crew doesn't like you. And so Selkirk finds himself in this position. He is a man who's on a ship during the War of Spanish Succession. And the Saint-Bord is the name of the ship. It's captained by a man called Thomas Stranding. And he is telling, Selkirk keeps telling Stranding there's something wrong with the boat. This boat is not seaworthy. We really, honestly, I'm telling you there's something very wrong with the boat. And he keeps saying this until the captain has had enough of this man's car pin. And he decides I can do without him. And so he just strands him in a place.

8:28It's off the coast of Colombia. It's near Malpelo Island. So we're talking about 400 kilometres from the coast of what is now Colombia. And he's just dumped there. He gives him a knife and the clothes he's wearing and pretty much, and a musket. That's very important, and a musket. So Selkek finds himself there and he, like Robinson Crusoe, is staring constantly on the horizon. He is Fife, born and brought up. Like everybody we're going to see on this story. According to reports, he was a quarrelsome man with an unruly disposition and had been in court before being a privateer and then stranded for indecent conduct in church.

9:05And I really wanted to see what that was. What did he do? That's in the record. In Lower Largo, no less. What did he do in church? But he's on this island and lucky for him, he has grown up in the house of his father, who is a shoemaker and a tanner in Lower Largo. So he's sort of imbibed through this. And it's probably that experience that saves his life, to be honest, because through what he has seen and what he decided not to be his career, very soon it becomes clear to this poor man who is, how long is he stranded? I think he's stranded for about three years on this island. And we haven't said that the ship he gets dumped from immediately sinks.

9:46Oh, sinks. He was right. He was right. He was absolutely right about this ship not being seaworthy. It was creaking and groaning. They dump him and they go off and the ship then promptly sinks. Sinks. So, you know, if only he had the pleasure of saying, told you so. But he doesn't even know this because he's so stranded. He's stranded and he's sitting doing sort of skinning goat skins. Well, that's what he does. So his clothes fray to pieces. And so then he does, with his musket, he hunts animals. And he has a very finite amount of bullets. But he manages to get, in the early days, shoot for food and then skins them.

10:20And then puts them to one side thinking this will come in handy at some point. And then he learns to stitch these clothes. And he also learns to stitch coconut shells into shoes to fashion them into sandals. And in the end, when they fall apart, he doesn't need them anymore because his feet are so calloused that, you know, he feels nothing. But it is thanks to that sort of tannery background and that shoemaking background that he's able to stitch together shelters to hide him away from the elements. And it is the thing that allows him to survive. He is eventually rescued. rescued. And we should say this is the basis for Desert Island Discs, isn't it?

10:55Because he also has a Bible. He has a Bible, yes, that's right. He has a Bible. This is Watcher and I. It doesn't have the complete works of Shakespeare at this point, but... Yes. But he has to wait until 1709 when a ship called the Duke notices him. The captain of the Duke takes him aboard and he immediately becomes this overnight sensation and sort of pretty much dines off the story for the rest of his life. There's some lovely bits of stories. He lives off feral goats and wild turnips. It's the nicest, not a bad diet. He personally domesticates the cats of the island and gets them to catch the rats.

11:33So he doesn't get overrun by rats. It is an amazing story. You know, if you read Daphosa Robinson Crusoe, because he would have been, like everybody else, bombarded with the story of Selkirk and how extraordinary this man was. And he sort of reproduces it. A nice detail for you if you're so keen on these very feminine ships. You'll be glad to hear that the ship that picks him up is called the Duchess, which would go nicely in a fleet with the fancy. That's hilarious because I read it was the Duke. Oh, how interesting. It is the Duchess. I literally wrote down his ship was the Duke. Captained by no less than William Dampier.

12:07Right. That's so funny. I wrote down the Duke so my brain wouldn't take that on. But Defoe does more than just kind of plagiarise the life of Selkirk and reproduce it because he does produce this thing called the Pirate Code. Now tell us, I mean, this is the first time this idea of a pirate code comes into the public consciousness. Remind us, what is the pirate code, William? So, yes, we've talked about the pirate code before. It's this idea, this sort of this fantasy, really. And this is one of the basis for this fantasy, that all pirates are equal, that whether you're black or a slave or wherever you're from, once you're in the Johnny Roger, you are all pirates together.

12:41But we know it not to be true at all, don't we? And in fact, all these guys have much darker and much more hierarchical horror stories attached to them. And slaves remain slaves. In fact, are often turned into slaves by these pirates. And Defoe is creating the beginning of this myth. It's an attractive idea that generations love. So the romance is there. Yes. Free men in an unfree world. You know, that there is some honor among thieves. It is an honor code among these thieves. But Defoe is the seminal influence on your man, Robert Louis Stevenson. because Stevenson is beguiled by the Defoe stories, isn't he?

13:17So as I say, yes, Robbie Louis Stevenson's childhood is in Edinburgh and his parents take holidays sometimes in Fife, near Lower Lago, where Alexander Selkirk is from and where he first hears these stories. And then partly in East Lothian on the North Berwick coast where he sees these islands and dreams up the idea of Treasure Island and a treasure map. And that's the starting point for this novel, which becomes the single thing above all else, Treasure Island, which romanticizes and, if you like, humanizes the whole story of the pirates. Let's put some dates on him. So he was born in 1850. He's the only child of Thomas Stevenson and Margaret Balfour.

13:57And by all accounts was a very weak and sickly child. He had weak lungs because his mother had had weak lungs before. And so he inherits this congenital weakness. He's unusually thin. He's sort of wiry with a narrow vulpine face like a wolf. He's rather handsome in middle age, and he has a kind of rather sort of dashing long hair that he wears over a velvet jacket and a kind of rather dashing moustache. But his family are famous, and my friend Bella Bathgate wrote a whole book about the Stephensons before Robbie Lewis, because they are the makers of the Scottish lighthouses. Oh, interesting. And so he grows up with lots of sea stories about, you know, all his family taking boats and going off to islands and building lighthouses on them.

14:37And as you can imagine, lots of stories of storms and lifeboats and sailors washed ashore. And this is absolutely the milk that he drinks as a child. This is the stories which he hears at the table. Robert Louis Stevenson, because I don't know him as well as William. He keeps calling him Robbie. Always Robbie. Robbie Louis Stevenson. Definitely Robbie. Robert Louis Stevenson. Once from Essex, always from Essex. Prodigious talent, this man, from a very clever family that make these lighthouses. But at the age of 16, he publishes his first work of fiction and it recounts an unsuccessful rebellion against the crown by Scottish Presbyterians known as the Covenanters in 1666.

15:16His dad is so quelling with pride over his son's achievement that he publishes this pamphlet at his own expense. I mean, talk about Nepo baby. He comes all getting published and this pamphlet is delivered far and wide. So Stevenson starts getting a very good reputation. So covenanters are kind of, I mean, frankly, they're kind of Scottish Taliban. And I'm ashamed to say that my ancestors were among them. And they were extremist Protestants who went so far as to take inspiration for the Gospels and to refuse to meet in churches because of the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus is sitting chatting to his disciples just on a mountainside.

15:52So this is what they did in Scotland, which is the most unsuitable place to have open air sermons ever because it's usually raining. Can you hear? I mean, I've just come back from Dundee. It's very windy. Very windy and very wet. But anyway, these guys burn down churches and they not only take issue with images and the usual sort of stuff that the early Protestant reformers take issue with in the Catholic Church, such as stained glass windows and illustrations of saints' lives and so on. And they also take issue with the churches themselves and burn them down. So all over Dumfreeshire and the West Coast, which is where the Covenanters are from, these guys systematically destroy the churches of the region.

16:31But they were also greatly romanticized in some parts of Scottish history. They're seen as these very romantic vagabonds who broke free from convention and were not part of the establishment. And I think this is what appeals to Robbie Lewis-Stevenson. He sees them as romantic figures. Well, okay. So his father is proud of him for writing this Covenant story. He prints out his work. He gives it to all of his friends and says, show your friends. This is my boy, my boy, Robbie. This is my boy. However, this sort of pride in his boy doesn't last very long because Robert Louis Stevenson or Robbie is not great at universities at the University of Edinburgh.

17:07And he is not doing so well. I mean, he enters very young. Is it normal for a child to enter at 16? I think it was at that age. Absolutely. Yeah. Okay, so he certainly goes to the University of Edinburgh at 16, but perhaps it's because the subject that his dad, like an Indian dad, says you're going to follow in the family footsteps, you're going to be a lighthouse engineer like me. But Robbie's wired differently. And, you know, had he gone into lighthouse engineering, the lighthouses might have been wired differently because it's not his thing at all. So instead of applying, you know, himself to his studies, he starts becoming a bit of a rebel.

17:41Now, Uni, I can't imagine you rebelled at uni because you rebelled all your life and you continue to do so. But I did sort of go through a slight goth phase until I realised my skin was far too dark. There were photographs that we can post on the internet. I would love to see the goth elita. I was a wannabe goth for about a month. And then I just realised I just couldn't carry off. I wasn't pale and interesting enough. But he goes through that same sort of rebellion and starts becoming known for his outrageous dress and behaviour. So he grows this cavalier moustache and twiddles it. And, you know, he's got this bob haircut.

18:13That he keeps throughout his life. It's just, you know, he turns and he gets himself an image. And a wide-brimmed hat. Yes. And what else? But he also smokes hash that I can't imagine was easily available in 19th century Edinburgh. And visited brothels, which probably was more available in 19th century India. Well, that was probably the extracurricular activity that most were involved in. But he wears this sort of very distinct velveteen coat and his nickname becomes Velvet Jacket at uni. And his dad is beside himself. Like, what is going to become of my boy, Robbie? He started with such promise and now he's turning into a bloody idiot.

18:50And he is absolutely obsessed with Daniel Defoe. And he's sitting there when he should be at college studying engineering and trying to become an engineer like his dad and uncles. He is imitating Daniel Defoe's style. and also traveling a lot. He soon gets out of Scotland, as all Scots do, and goes off to the French Riviera to recover from his ill health. And, of course, once out in France, he begins to have love affairs, falls in love with a woman called Fanny van der Grift Osborne, which sounds like it's not going to end well. Because? A married but separated American woman, 11 years his senior.

19:31Right, okay. Not just that she's a relation to the Osborne. Okay. And she's living in an artist colony. So he's quite a dashing and sort of bohemian character. He goes off to America to pursue her there. But again, his health is too delicate. It takes a turn for the worse as he's crossing the American plains, tracking down this woman. So he ends up poor, sick and starving in Monterey in California, which is where Steinbeck also ends up. And Steinbeck finds in the low life of Monterey all the inspiration for his characters in Cannery Row and Of Mice and Men. Okay, and Stevenson does the same, doesn't he?

20:09And he also ends up in San Francisco. So looking out at the waters and nearly dying and seeing the low life by the keys was entirely influential on him. So there he is. He's poor. He's bedraggled. His heart is broken. He's sick. He's looking out at the waters around San Francisco. but life is about to change. Join us after the break and find out how.

20:58The Seven Kingdoms, Superman und vielen mehr. Ab jetzt, HBO Max.

21:07Welcome back. So, we left poor old Robbie Louis Stevenson far from Scotland, in Monterey, heartbroken, impoverished and sick. But things take a turn for the better, quite soon after that. And he hears that Fanny has indeed obtained a divorce from her husband. and on May the 19th, 1880, she and Stevenson were married. And a year later, he returns to Scotland. Now, even in the Scotland of my childhood, there was a lot of raised eyebrows about divorced women. So I can imagine that when he settles in Braemar, it's because his family want nothing to do with it. It would be very scandalous in the 1880s to marry a foreign woman who'd been divorced.

21:49They think he's gone quite mad with his moustache and his velvet jacket. So this is all now part of his brand. Robbie now. So yes, he sort of stays far, far away. But does Fanny have a son already when he marries? She already has a child that he kind of takes on, doesn't he? Which adds to the scandal of all of this. He's a well-grown young man. He's 13 years old and he's come with them and they're sitting in a cottage in Braemar. So it's not as if when he begins writing Treasure Island that he's at all an established writer or a successful figure or the romantic sort of dashing figure that has children's festivals named after him all over Scotland.

22:28No, he's a rejected Nepo baby who has one pamphlet to his name and now his dad who got it out there is not talking to him. So yes, quite. Yeah, so it's a bit of a mess. But drawing on Daniel Defoe and drawing on his East Lothian childhood holidays and drawing on this story that's there in that original book on the pirates, the non-fiction book, that both Blackbeard and Labousse, the French pirate, the buzzard, leave treasure maps. These are historical stories which are actually established. And drawing on that gives the starting point for this book, Treasure Island, when a treasure map is found.

23:11It's even more charming than that. It starts with a home project. So Fanny's 13-year-old son is busying himself around this Braemar cottage. He's not got any of his friends left. He's not with his dad. So he starts amusing himself. I assume they're sort of cash too. Yeah, he does paintings using watercolours. And he wants to turn this sort of drab cottage into something more beautiful. This 13-year-old, you can totally see this in your mind's eye. So he starts turning the rooms into a picture gallery just to keep himself occupied. Stevenson is charmed by this and sometimes joins in. And it is on one of those occasions that he makes this map of a fictional island, which he calls Treasure Island.

23:47And that is this image in the cottage, on the wall, in this picture gallery that is the imagination of a 13-year-old that the idea of Treasure Island haunts him and keeps coming back to him, this map that he's drawn just to entertain his stepson. And the Scottish law, which may or may not be true, is that the shape of the Treasure Island which is drawn is this island of Phidra between Gillan and North Berwick in East Lothian and it's turned upside down. and that's the shape of the island. That is so interesting. He actually talks about this map and how this sort of image keeps haunting his brain.