Wednesday, 10 April 2013
Stories and legends always always excite our imagination. It takes me back in the days of kings, great sailing ships, cannons and pirates.
Here is a legend (based on the true story and substantiated evidence) about the song "Fifteen men on the dead man's chest" came from.
The mystery of "Dead Man's Chest" and fifteen pirates managed to solve only in our time.
English geographer and researcher, a passionate traveler and collector of seashells Quentin van Marla took a small naval expedition to the Caribbean in the area of Cuba.
He had a speedboat, adapted for a long walks by the sea. Suddenly, the motor of the boat stalled, and all attempts to make it work failed. He took a binocular to look around and he found a narrow stripe of land on the horizon. He built a primitive sail and by the dusk Marla reached small island.
Traveler notified his position by a radio rescue service and spent night in the boat. At the dawn he decided to explore the island.
It was a desolate, sad piece of land, rocky, covered with small bushes, where snakes and lizards were the only inhabitants.
On board of a rescue boat Marla asked the captain - what is the name of the island where he spent the night. Marla was amazed with the reply ... the island was called "Dead Man's Chest"!
Traveler immediately realized that in his hands is the key to the mystery of the song from the novel "Treasure Island".
Next Marla took archival searches, studied the history of piracy in the Caribbean and detailed biographies of famous pirates. Finally, he found the documents, which fully confirmed his guess on the part of the words of the pirate song.
This happened at the beginning of XVIII century. On the pirate ship "Queen Anne's Revenge," commanded by Edward Teach, known as Blackbeard, one of the most feared pirate leaders of the Caribbean, because of captains cruelty, crew started riot. The rebels had no luck. Blackbeard,was strong man and perfectly used his weapons, locked himself in his cabin, fought off the attackers and quickly suppressed a riot.
Teach decided to land fifteen particularly active rebel on a deserted island called "Dead Man's Chest." Each of the pirates handed over a bottle of rum, and then stranded a bunch of boarding sabers. Teach knew that the island has no fresh water, and rum only enhances thirst, and, therefore, all the rebels are doomed to a painful death. It was not enough for vengeful Teach . Knowing irascible, irrepressible nature of drunken pirates, he hoped that they would soon they will get drunk and hack each other.
Rebels landed on the island, Blackbeard set sail, and soon his ship disappeared over the horizon.
For Billy Bones and his companions came nightmarish days and nights. On the dead man's chest was really tight, as in the trunk.On the Extended to quadrilateral land size 10x20 meters bunched people had no way to hide from the sun, wind and snakes.
With the help of flint sailors produced fire and lit a small fire. Over night in the pieces of canvas they collected dew, slightly diluted with sea water and equally divided between them, but the water was still not enough. Of thirst and heat of the sun, many began to rave, and inflammation of the brain of people spawned at night nightmarish creatures like sea devil Davy Jones.
But despite the hopes Blackbeard fights and stabbing between the pirates did not arise. This may have contributed to the credibility of Billy Bones. Apparently, he was predicted to captain instead of Teach.
During outflow the island increased in sizes a little, the sea receded, and exhausted pirates collected mollusks, crabs and turtles. Snakes and lizards were the main food of pirates.
In a month Teach returned to the "Chest of the dead" island. What was its amazement when instead of the dried corpses he found all the pirates quite live, however, hardly moving feet from exhaustion. On request of team the Black Beard forgave rebels and I took them on the ship.
The history about fifteen pirates landed on the "Chest of the dead", quickly extended across all Caribbean Sea, and soon there was a song telling about tests which has fallen to their lot.
