Related Directory Categories
Sources
Help build the largest human-edited directory on the web.
Submit a site - Become an editor
Wikipedia. Licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
Are you an expert in this subject? Join the discussion and share your knowledge at Wikipedia.org.
Dead Man's Chest
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"Dead Man's Chest" (also known as Fifteen Men On A Dead Man's Chest or Derelict) is a fictional sailor's work song or "sea shanty" from Robert Louis Stevenson's novel Treasure Island (1883), and a later expanded poem by Young E. Allison (1891). It has since been used in many later works of art in various forms.
Contents |
Stevenson found the name "Dead Man's Chest" in a book by Charles Kingsley. Stevenson said "Treasure Island came out of Kingsley's At Last: A Christmas in the West Indies (1871); where I got the 'Dead Man's Chest' - that was the seed".[1][2]
In Treasure Island the full song is not reported. The chorus is given as:
| “ | "Fifteen men on the dead man's chest-- ...Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum! |
” |
The book mentions one other phrase of the song, near its end: "But one man of her crew alive, What put to sea with seventy-five."
- In 1891 poet Young E. Allison (1853-1932) expanded the original lines from the novel into a poem he named "Derelict" and published in the Louisville Courier-Journal.
- In 1901 music was added to the lyrics of "Derelict" for a Broadway rendition of Treasure Island.
- In the Belgian comic The Secret of the Unicorn ((Le secret de la Licorne), a drunken Captain Haddock sings the song while narrating to Tintin the encounter of his ancestor with the pirate Red Rackham.
- In 1967 writers for the Walt Disney film company found inspiration in "Derelict" for the sea-song "Yo Ho (A Pirate's Life for Me)" which was played in the "Pirates of the Caribbean" theme ride at Disneyland.
- The song is used to comic effect in the 1978 film Revenge of the Pink Panther. Inspector Clouseau (Peter Sellers) is disguised as a pirate, and, as usual, bungles every aspect of it: his parrot is an inflatable one that spontaneously deflates several times, and he is unable to walk on his faux-peg leg without falling down. In addition, he tires to sing the song but mixes up the words; the song as he sings it reads: "Sixteen chests on a dead man's rum, yo-ho-ho and a bottle of the chest."
- Tom Waits's 1985 album Rain Dogs contains the lyric "Sixteen men on a dead man's chest" and other piratical and sailorly phrases.
- Alan Moore made a play on the song in the 1986 graphic novel Watchmen. In a story-within-a-story, the main character, the only survivor of a ship waylaid by pirates in the open waters, must strap the carcasses of his crew together to form a raft. The chapter is called "One man on fifteen dead men's chests."
- In the 1997 video game Curse of Monkey Island, a chapter in a pamphlet of motivational pirate literature is entitled "How to Get More Than Fifteen Men on a Dead Man's Chest."
- The Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode Time Chasers features a riff by Tom Servo: "Fifteen men on a dead Dodge Dart!"
- In German, the song is known as "17 Mann auf des Totenmann's Kiste", so it mentions 2 more men.
- In Michael Ende's Jim Button and Luke the Engine Driver and its sequel, the song is changed again to "13 men sitting on a coffin".
- The "Pirates of the Caribbean" theme ride was expanded into the film Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003), and the eponymous sequel Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006).
- The song appearing in Treasure Island was sung by Gibbs at the beginning of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest.
- Much of the song is quoted in the song "Pirate Song" by the punk/oi! band "Main Street Saints"
"Derelict" was a composition by Young E. Allison in 1891, nine years after Treasure Island was published. It is based on Stevenson's 4-line genesis from Treasure Island. "Derelict" is also variously known as Dead Man's Chest, Yo Ho Ho and Fifteen Men On A Dead Man's Chest. It has been so often imitated and derived from that it is often mistaken to be the original song from Treasure Island.
- ^ David Cordingly. Under the Black Flag: The Romance and the Reality of Life Among the Pirates. ISBN 0679425608.
- ^ Robert Louis Stevenson. "To Sidney Colvin. Late May 1884", in Selected Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson. Page 263.
- Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson, ISBN 0-451-52704-6