Today is Thursday 11th of March 2010. There are 31 days in this month
  The
mystery of the pirates’ song, “Fifteen men on
the dead man’s chest, yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum,” from
Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island , has
been solved. Until now, its meaning has baffled readers and Stevenson
himself never offered any explanation.The answer is provided by Geographical, published by the Royal Geographical Society, by an explorer who says Dead Mans Chest is part of the British Virgin Islands. In the early 1700s, says Quentin van Marle , the pirate Edward Teach – known as “ Blackbeard ” – punished a mutinous crew by marooning them on Dead Man’s Chest, an island 250 yards square surrounded by high cliffs and without water or landing places. Each was given a cutlass and a bottle of rum, and Teach’s hope was that they would kill each other. But when he returned at the end of 30 days he found that 15 had survived. This would explain in full the verse:
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There is no food on the island, Mr van Marle says, which is occupied
by pelicans, lizards, non-poisonous snakes – and mosquitoes.
It has never been developed for tourism because of its inaccessibility.
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