Re: 15 Men on a Dead Man's Chest
Posted by Bruce Kahl on September
19, 2001 In Reply to: 15 Men on a Dead Man's Chest
posted by Solar Flare on September 19, 2001
: Hello all,
: Does anyone know what the phrase above means, and
: if possible, its origins? I've heard that it's
: somehow related to piracy, but not much else...
: Please e-mail me if you have something, since I'm
: not a regular here.
From a pirate song:
"fifteen men on the dead man's chest-
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
Drink and the devil had done for the rest-
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!"
The song, sung by sailors when hauling ropes on their sailing ships,
was included by Robert Louis Stevenson in his classic novel "Treasure
Island" published in 1883.
Dead Man's Chest is a tiny isle that forms part of the British
Virgin Islands in the Caribbean Sea. Local history and folklore
claims that pirate Edward Teach, known as Blackbeard, punished a
mutinous crew by marooning them on Dead Man's Chest, which has high
cliffs and no water and is inhabited by pelicans and snakes. Each
sailor was given a cutlass and a bottle of rum.
Teach's hope was that the pirates would kill each other, but when
he returned after a month he found 15 men had survived. This would
explain the verse: "Fifteen men on the dead man's chest. Yo-ho-ho,
and a bottle of rum! Drink and the devil had done for the rest Yo-ho-ho,
and a bottle of rum!"
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