We have set up the Long John Silver Trust to bring to Bristol Harbourside a first-class sculpture of Long John Silver and a further series of artworks – The Treasure Island Trail, to bring alive Stevenson’s classic novel.

We hope you enjoy exploring our site!

Festival Of Ideas Event

13th May 2008 - 6pm to 7pm

Free event, but tickets must be booked in advance, please Email: ideas@businesswest.co.uk

Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery -
Sebastian Peake on Mervyn Peake

Mervyn Peake was one of the greatest artists and writers of the twentieth century, author of Gormenghast, his illustrations for Treasure Island, a novel forever associated with Bristol, are considered among the best ever produced for R.L.Stevenson’s masterpiece.

2008 being the 40th anniversary of his death, his son Sebastian Peake, co-compiler of Mervyn Peake; the Man and his Art, will be speaking about his father’s life and work, display recently-discovered drawings, paintings, and the designs for a stage adaptation of Gormenghast for which it was intended Benjamin Britten would write the music, and also read some of Peake’s poems.

Sebastian will also be doing a book signing afterwards. For other Festival of Ideas events throughout the month of May please go to www.ideasfestival.co.uk

Left: Sebastian Peake at the Clifton Bookshop in 2005 helping to launch The Bristol Treasure Island Trail (published by Broadcast Books) after he so generously allowed the Long John silver Trust to use some of his Father’s illustrations.

It’ll be great to see him back in Bristol, this time helping to celebrate the 125th anniversary of Treasure Island’s publication as a book.

Not only is Sebastian a great orator and authority on Mervyn Peake, he is also one of Long John Silver Trust’s valued Patron’s. If you can’t make the Festival of Ideas Event, please go to www.mervynpeake.org for details of other Peake happenings.

Long John Silver Invades Waterstones in Bristol !

March 6th 2008 was World Book Day and to prove the point the anti-hero of Robert Louis Stevenson’s ‘ Treasure Island ’ returned to Bristol to persuade the City’s children to increase their reading abilities.

Long John Silver, the loveable villain of the book, was the fictional landlord of the ‘Spyglass Inn’, where land-lubbers mixed with sea-farers and all attempted to avoid the attentions of the ‘Press Gang’. The Inn, reputedly based on Bristol’s ‘Hole in the Wall’ pub, was equipped with a spyglass window where revellers could keep a lookout, and escape through one of two doors into the maze of harbourside streets. The ‘Hole in the Wall’s name derives from the fact that it still possesses such a window.

The Long John Silver Statue Trust has been set up to promote Bristol’s literary and cultural heritage by creating a ‘Treasure Island Trail’ of sculptures or plaques to commemorate various scenes from the book. The trail would culminate in a sculpture of Long John himself, preferably stationed outside the ‘Hole in the Wall’.

To publicise the project the Trust commissioned a painting by Frank Shipsides, Bristol’s own maritime painter, showing how Long John would look on his plinth, and are selling prints to raise funds. As an interim measure a one-and-a-half times life-size wicker sculpture was commissioned from Devon sculptor Stephen Froome, and Long John’s inaugural appearance was at Waterstones Bookshop in Broadmead’s Galleries. He was unveiled by Bristol’s Lord Mayor Councillor Royston Griffey and to accompany him, members of the Trust played out a shortened version of ‘ Treasure Island ’ to parties of schoolchildren.

Long John has further excursions planned and will be publicizing the Bath Theatre Royal’s production of ‘Pirates of Penzance ’. He also hopes to front Bristol Hippodrome’ s summer production of ‘ Treasure Island ’ in July and to make other appearances throughout the year.

Watch out – there’s a pirate about!

Sportsman’s Supper in aid of PROPS

We are delighted to report that the Sportsman’s Supper we co sponsored with Hawkesbury Upton cricket Club raised £6,500 for PROPS. It was a great night. Huge thanks to our celebrity sportsmen and our generous guests.

Out and About on the Trail

If you would like to experience an audio version of our Bristol Treasure Island Trail please go to DestinationBristol’s website at www.visitbristol.co.uk and download their excellent “Bristol Quayside Adventure” podcast for your MP3 Player. This innovative production is a combination of Bristol’s maritime history and Treasure Island, based in no small part on our Trail.

The Long John Silver Trust is also proud to announce a closer involvement with Bristol’s very own Buccaneer:- Pirate Pete, who is now an Honorary Member of our happy band of cut throats. To find out more about him please go to www.piratewalks.co.uk

Pirate Ferry Boat

The inaugural Treasure Island Cruise took place in July of 2006, where a party of pupils from Briars Wood school, under the auspices of locally based charity PROPS took to the high seas of Bristol’s historic Floating Harbour…View Article

Bristol Harbour Festival

Bristol Harbour Festival 28th - 29th July 2006, Bristol Publishers team up with the Long John Silver Trust,  -“spreading the word"

Yo-Ho-Ho and a bottle of fun!!

Long John Silver Bottled Beer is selling like the clappers, and for Christmas, special gift packs are available.

Click to View Label

Two of our stockists in Bristol are well worth a visit , Avery’s Wine Merchants and Gardiner Haskins.
Further afield, Wickwar Brewery’s own shop, and The Beaufort Arms in Hawkesbury Upton, can all solve your present buying problems.

Long John Silver Beer in BOTTLES!

We are delighted that our friends at Wickwar Brewery have now produced Long John Silver Beer in bottles. The bottled beer was launched in July 2006 at Wickwar’s brewery tap, and over thirty Long John Silver Trustees and supporters gathered to celebrate and (judging by the big pile of empties) promptly demolished the entire first batch.

Jonfun and Sarah examine a soon to be demolished stack of bottled LJS
Photo by Noel Jones

Frank Shipsides' "Tribute" Print

To start the fundraising activities of The Long John Silver Trust, Frank was commissioned to paint his impression of what literatures most famous scallywag would look like outside Stevenson's Spy-Glass Inn. He very kindly agreed to donate his royalties to the Trust in order for our campaign to get off the ground.

The Long John Silver Trust's first patron (and esteemed Bristol artist) Frank Shipsides handing over print number one to Mike Fussell outside the Hole-in-the-Wall in 2004 with a rueful Long John looking on...

It was the Trust's intention to have 150 copies of the print signed by Frank but unfortunately, after only being able to sign 70 of them, Old Father Time caught up with him at the tender age of 97 in 2005.

Interactive Treasure Island Trail Online

There now is an interactive map of the proposed trail online here. Featuring

Treasure Island Trail Book Release

This wonderful little book - packed with rarely seen illustrations - celebrates Bristol's connections with piracy and the high seas and includes stories about some of the city's most enterprising but rascally sons. It is also investigates Bristol's literary links with one of the most exciting pirate stories ever written,
Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island.

The Mervyn Peake Estate - an enthusiastic supporter of the Trail - has kindly allowed us to use Mervyn Peake's superb illustrations taken from the 1949 edition of the book.

A great present for landlubbers: price £4.95(isbn: 978 1 874092 31 2)

Rarely available  framed prints of Mervyn Peake's Treasure Island illustrations as featured in the book are available to purchase from our merchandise page

The Treasure Island Trail is published by