The Crew List
Before you board, take a crew list from me, because Treasure Island has a lot of names and nearly all of them come down to money. I keep it light. I stop at chapter fifteen, so no deaths and no ending. The one thing I do tell you about the cook is something the book itself tells you at the halfway mark.
I read the Project Gutenberg text, and I give each person’s first chapter. Each time, I will tell you one thing about how they handle money. That turns out to be the best way to sort this crew.
Jim Hawkins
Jim is the narrator, and he is first on the page in chapter one. His father keeps the Admiral Benbow inn, and dies in chapter three. His mother is brave and stubborn. In chapter four she opens a dead man’s chest, and insists on counting out only what he owed, not a coin more.
Jim is a boy who listens. In chapter five he says his curiosity is stronger than his fear, and the whole book proves it. He crouches in a bush, climbs into an apple barrel, and slips into a boat to go ashore. The doctor calls him a noticing lad. The squire says he puts prodigious faith in him. Jim’s money habit is to take the paper, not the gold. When he picks up an oilskin packet in chapter four, he does it only to square the count.
The Gentlemen
Dr. Livesey is the doctor of the district, and also a magistrate. He is neat, with a snow-white powdered wig and quick black eyes, and nothing frightens him. In chapter one he faces a drunk pirate with a drawn knife, and tells him calmly that he will hang at the next assizes. His money habit is to ask the plain question first. In chapter six he asks whether the treasure will amount to much.
Squire Trelawney is the opposite. He is over six feet tall, with black eyebrows and a quick temper, and he is the one with the money. He pays for the ship and the crew in Bristol, and he cannot keep a secret. The doctor says as much to his face in chapter six, and says he is the only man he is afraid of. The captain complains in chapter nine that the secret has been told to the parrot. The squire’s money habit is to spend it, and to talk about it.
Captain Smollett is the third gentleman, and the one who is hard to like. He is sharp-looking and angry, and first appears in chapter nine. He tells the squire to his face that he does not like the cruise, the men or the mate. Later he tells the doctor there will be no favourites on his ship. His money habit is suspicion. He says treasure is ticklish work, and he does not like treasure voyages on any account.
The Cook
Now the one this book is remembered for. Long John Silver is named in chapter seven, and meets Jim in chapter eight. His left leg is cut off close by the hip, and he gets about on a crutch, hopping like a bird. His face is as big as a ham, pale and smiling and smart. He runs a tavern with a brass telescope for a sign, and the sailors call him Barbecue.
Here is the fact I promised. In chapter eleven, Jim learns that Silver was Flint’s quartermaster, and that he is the ringleader of the plot. That makes him a pirate in a cook’s apron. And yet the book is fond of him. In his first chapters he is warm, quick and funny.
His money habit is saving. He tells a young sailor that it is saving that does it. He says he put aside nine hundred pounds from his years under England, and two thousand after Flint, all safe in a bank. He has already sold the tavern. I find that very telling. This is a man who has planned his retirement.
Flint’s Old Crew
Flint himself never speaks. He is dead before the book begins, and the squire calls him the bloodthirstiest buccaneer that sailed. The treasure is his, and everyone’s loyalty is to his name.
Billy Bones is the old captain from chapter one, with a tarry pigtail and a sabre cut. He was Flint’s first mate, and he is terrified of a seafaring man with one leg. He arrives paying in gold, and drinks until it is gone. The grand total in his account book is labelled his pile.
Black Dog, from chapter two, is a pale man missing two fingers. Pew, from chapter three, is a blind beggar in a green shade, and the cruellest voice Jim ever heard. Silver says in chapter eleven that Pew once spent twelve hundred pounds in a single year, and then starved. That makes Pew the book’s warning about spending.
On the ship you meet three more. Israel Hands is the coxswain, whom the squire thinks he hired himself. Job Anderson is the boatswain, the likeliest man aboard. And Mr. Arrow, the mate, drinks, and nobody can find where he gets it. Jim guesses in chapter eleven that the answer is Silver’s rum keg.
The Helpers
The rest of the cast does the quiet work. Supervisor Dance is the revenue officer who rides to the inn. Mr. Blandly is the Bristol friend who found the ship, though the squire reports that some Bristol men say he would do anything for money, and calls that a slander. Tom Redruth, Joyce and Hunter are the squire’s servants. And in chapter fifteen you meet a wild man in goatskins, who has not spoken to a Christian in three years and dreams of cheese.
Who Wants What
So who wants what? Silver wants to retire a gentleman. Pew wants the map, whatever it costs. The squire wants the treasure, and the adventure. Jim’s mother wants exactly what she is owed. The captain wants a ship under discipline. The doctor wants the whole party safe, and Jim close by.
And here is my reading, and it is an opinion. The book does not sort people into good and bad. It sorts them by what they do with money. The saver, the spender, the grabber, and the one who counts out only her due. That is why I find it a better way to read this crew than good and bad.
If this helped, subscribe, and tap like. And tell me in the comments whether you are a saver or a spender.
