Though the Israel Hands in Treasure Island bears little resemblance to his namesake, this gives further credence to the idea that RLS did know at least some things about real-life pirates and piracy before he wrote Treasure Island. It is generally assumed that RLS probably read about Hands in Captain Charles Johnson’s A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates (1724). How, when, and where he died is unknown, but legend has it that he died a beggar in London. He was captured and taken to Williamsburg, Virginia for trial after Blackbeard’s death, but he was pardoned in exchange for testimony against corrupt officials with whom Blackbeard had conspired.

Though this shooting was likely an accident – Blackbeard was apparently aiming at another crew member, but firearms were notoriously inaccurate at the time – it permanently disabled Hands. He was actually shot in the knee by Blackbeard himself. He was made captain of one of the ships in Blackbeard’s fleet. Israel Hands – also known as Basilica Hands – was a real-life pirate he acted as second-in-command to Blackbeard (Edward Teach) himself. According to his 1893 essay ‘My First Book’, RLS decided “to take an admired friend of mine, to deprive him of all his finer qualities and higher graces of temperament, to leave him with nothing but his strength, his courage, his quickness, and his magnificent geniality, and to try to express these in terms of the culture of a raw tarpaulin.” The result was the infamously unscrupulous, ruthless, yet charismatic one-legged pirate. Henley had lost a foot to tuberculosis of the bone, leaving him minus (at least part of) a leg. Robert Louis Stevenson (RLS) readily admitted that he based Long John Silver on a friend of his, W.E. The following post was written by Treasure Island Assistant Director and Dramaturg Rebecca Fredrickson.

Treasure island book