[811] in Humor
HUMOR: Yo Ho Yo! Now You Know!
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Andrew A. Bennett)
Mon Apr 10 17:11:11 1995
To: humor@MIT.EDU
Date: Mon, 10 Apr 1995 16:52:29 EDT
From: "Andrew A. Bennett" <abennett@MIT.EDU>
Date: Mon, 10 Apr 1995 18:07:12 +0000 (GMT)
From: Espacionaute Spiff domine! <MATOSSIAN@aries.colorado.edu>
From: bostic@CS.Berkeley.EDU (Keith Bostic)
Excerpted-from: WhiteBoard News for April 03, 1995
London, England:
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
The mystery of a pirate song that baffled generations of sailors by
referring to "15 men on the dead man's chest" has been solved by an
explorer, according to a British journal.
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, but its origin was never explained by the writer.
In the latest issue of Geographical, published by Britain's Royal
Geographical Society, explorer Quentin van Marle says Dead Man's Chest is
a tiny isle that forms part of the British Virgin Islands in the Caribbean
Sea.
Van Marle found from local history and folklore 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!"
