🚨 Spoilers ahead. That's the whole point. If you wanted to be surprised, you should have read the book.
Young Jim Hawkins finds a treasure map in the sea chest of Billy Bones, a pirate who dies at his family's Admiral Benbow inn. Squire Trelawney and Dr. Livesey fund a voyage on the Hispaniola, under Captain Smollett. The cook, Long John Silver, secretly leads a mutiny of old pirates. Jim overhears the plot from an apple barrel. On the island, Jim meets marooned Ben Gunn, who has already moved the gold. The loyal crew wins out, and Silver slips away with a bag of coins. Everyone else goes home rich. Jim still has nightmares.
- The map came before the story. Stevenson drew an island map for his stepson Lloyd Osbourne in 1881. Staring at it, he started inventing characters, and the book grew from there.
- It debuted under a fake name. The story first ran as a serial called The Sea Cook in the magazine Young Folks, credited to Captain George North. Stevenson's own name went on the 1883 book edition.
- The famous pirate song has a sequel. Stevenson's book supplies only a few lines of the song about fifteen men on the dead man's chest. In 1891, Young E. Allison wrote the longer poem Derelict that expanded it.
- “X marks the spot on the map.” Wrong letter. The map shows red crosses, plus written bearings to the big tree and Spy-glass shoulder. Nobody in the book digs by an X.
- “Long John Silver dies at the end.” Silver survives. He slips off at a Caribbean port with a bag of coins, and Jim says nothing more was heard of him.
- “Jim Hawkins narrates every single chapter.” Hold on. Dr. Livesey takes over for three chapters, each titled Narrative Continued by the Doctor, while Jim is busy elsewhere on the island. Jim then resumes the story.
- If they say: “Isn't the treasure still buried where Flint left it?”
You say: “Not by the time they arrive. Ben Gunn, marooned for three years, already dug it up and hauled it to his cave. The pirates reach an empty hole.” - If they say: “Wasn't Silver's parrot named Polly?”
You say: “No, I say it's Captain Flint, named after the pirate who buried the gold. It squawks 'pieces of eight' from Silver's shoulder, which is how you spot a fake.”
🍸 Your Bar Line
Treasure Island is a boy, a map with red crosses, and a one-legged cook named Silver who mutinies, loses, and strolls off with coins while Ben Gunn's empty hole delivers the punchline.
