Karl Moeller

The Caribbean, 1778. Jim Hawkins, the Doctor, and the Squire are on their way back to Treasure Island to retrieve a fortune in silver. To get home safely, they must first evade the American Navy, the Spanish Navy, and the largest pirate captain in the world.

A few comments about Stevenson's 'Treasure Island'. Its original, discarded title was 'The Sea Cook'. A child, reading this as an adventure, will be taken by the straightforward plot and striking characters. An adult, (re)reading the same book, is struck by Long John Silver's dual nature -- on the surface, a genial, talkative old sailor, yet ready at a moment to revert to a murderous form. Three years later Stevenson wrote 'Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde' (no 'The') which is another, more direct psychological examination of an artificially-created dual personality in one body, as well as a taut, well-paced horror-thriller. An adult, reading 'Treasure Island', will see the storm coming long before the narrator, young Jim Hawkins, does. In a sense, it's written in layers, one for the boy, one for the man.

Because of its fame as the pre-eminent pirate novel, one might imagine that 'Treasure Island' sprang full-grown from Stevenson's pen. There are in fact some recognizable precedents, well available to Stevenson. Edgar Allan Poe used a young man as both a main character and as first-person narrator in a sea-novel featuring mutiny, piracy, and cannibalism, along with adventures on shore, in his only full-length novel, 1838's 'The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket'. Always the horror writer, Poe includes a ship of corpses, and a dead man with a red cap, revived by Stevenson as O'Brien, killed by Israel Hands in 'Treasure Island'. Some historians also claim that the comic, tragic, cheese-fixated character Ben Gunn is a caricature of Daniel Defoe's protagonist in 'Robinson Crusoe'.

One of the reasons that 'Treasure Island', published in 1883, became so widely read, indeed, one of the most popular works of the late ninteenth and twentieth centuries, was the spotty enforcement of international copyright law. Less than two decades earlier, in order to pay his bills, Charles Dickens was forced a second time to go on tour in America, reading from his works, because copyright law was in its infancy, and no international enforcement agency then existed. With no royalties due Stevenson's estate, it was an attractive, inexpensive proposition, and there were myriad unauthorized versions of the book published in English-speaking countries, and probably beyond. The 1911 'Wyeth' edition, featuring artwork by N.C. Wyeth, is justifiably the most famous of them all.

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Loving 'Treasure Island' as I do, and still possessing the 1927 illustrated edition (Saalfield Publishing, Ohio, copyright-free) I enjoyed so as a boy, some years ago my mind started cogitating about What Happened After The End. How would young Jim Hawkins utilize his share of Flint's treasure, once home in England? What could a commoner, a taverner's son, suddenly possessing wealth, do with it?

Naturally I considered Jim might emulate the ever-sensible and intelligent Doctor Livesey. Oxford medical school, required no pedigree, only money. How would Livesey handle his infusion of money? Wisely. The Squire Trelawney was the one who hired Silver and his gang of cutthroats, on the basis of them being 'old salts'... a fool, in other words. So the Squire might easily overextend himself financially, with debtor's prison as the prod to action.

Stevenson left the motivation for a sequel in the bar silver our heroes had left behind on the island. Add the Squire's possible financial woes -- debtor's prison -- to the lure of several hundred thousand pounds in still-buried silver, and there is the motivation for a 'Return To Treasure Island'. But why should Jim, on his way to a comfortable living as a surgeon, risk his life -- again? Enter the Squire Trelawney's hitherto-unmentioned beautiful daughter Lilith, also in danger of imprisonment. Add a time limit, the ticking clock, for urgency.

However, at first I simply had the setup. There was no antagonist, as I decided that intense media overload --Robert Newton's 'aar, matey' Silver from the 1950 Disney film, animated movies, chain restaurants -- had moved the Long John Silver character far from Stevenson's conception right into caricature. Thus I had the challenge of writing a compelling story minus the most famous character. There was no second or third act. My sole idea was that our heroes should return victorious and rich(er). I stalled, came to a complete and utter stop, as soon as they stepped on board the old Hispaniola -- because as a desert-dweller, I knew little about the age of sail or shiphandling.

A friend of mine, percussionist extraordinaire Will Hillis, told me, "You need to read some Patrick O'Brian." O'Brian wrote a series set in the Napoleonic era, following a Royal Navy captain and his friend, a surgeon. Some may recall Peter Weir cribbed plot elements from at least four of O'Brian's books and created the film 'Master and Commander' with Russell Crowe as the lead and Paul Bettany hopelessly miscast as his sidekick.

I began reading the O'Brian series out of duty and research and soon fell in love. There are twenty volumes in this series, and I read the entire thing through three to five times. Call it fifteen million words or so. I also spent many hours rereading Jane Austen. So the period language came naturally, and anyone can research anything using the Internet. But meanwhile, my characters were frozen, waiting on or about Page 68, on the refitted schooner Hispaniola, moored at the Bristol docks.

Toward the end of this several-years-long reading binge, I had so much Age of Sail information in my head that my antagonist, the entire second act, and the third act, came to me unbidden, in the shower, just as you hear about. I outlined like crazy before it faded, writing out some of the scenes/chapters that seemed most vivid (the movies call 'em 'tentpole' scenes), and finished the first draft while in India some years ago.

Possibly because I had eliminated Long John as a character, one of my desires was to otherwise follow Stevenson's structure as much as possible. First was using Jim Hawkins' first-person narration as the primary observer and voice. Next was to 'cut away' to Doctor Livesey for a period when our main characters were separated. The narration then continues, by Jim, through to the end of the book. There are even twenty chapters, like Stevenson's manuscript.

A complicating factor, besides the decision to avoid Long John Silver, was that I determined to use actual world events -- the American Revolution, war with France and Spain -- as a backdrop. Captain Gustavus Conyngham, a privateer attached to the infant American Navy, did exist, and his ship was indeed called the Revenge. Setting the story in 1778, when much of the western world was at war, gave plenty of opportunity to place my heroes in peril.

I also wished to avoid as many pirate novel clichés as possible. A complete sea-battle was described from the point of view of the Hispaniola's crew imprisoned in the hold of an American Navy ship. Duco's pirate ship was a disguised, heavily modified slaver. It was identified as such by an American lieutenant with a sensitive nose -- it was exposed as a pirate, not a slaver, because it did not stink. The Americans determined to hang the giant pirate captain Duco while he was unconscious, only to have him revive and apparently dive into the Atlantic. The pirates, once in control, systematically tossed captured sailors, the ones unwilling to join, to the sharks. It could be said that the finale on the island, where the pirates were overcome by eating a stew made of mushrooms called 'Flesh Of The Gods', well known to botanists of the day, is moderately innovative, and reveals I am indeed a child of the Sixties. At any rate I had great fun challenging the reader's assumptions about twists and turns in a pirate novel.

Regarding sailing arcana, I sat with my National Geographic map of the Caribbean, a ruler, compass, and protractor, looking at prevailing winds and currents, calculating directions, distances and sailing times. Of course that wasn't enough. Fortunately we have a sailor friend, Kathy Hill, who used to organize the Chesapeake Bay Schooner Race, and I emailed entire passages to her, explaining what I wanted to happen. Thank you Kathy! By the time I was done, with her help, my written sailhandling and navigation shouldn't cause a real sailor to chortle. Or even snicker.

Writers claim writing is a solitary, agonizing process, where you squeeze blood out of your forehead before words land on the page. Nah. For me, that rich period of creating characters and circumstances, allowing them free rein, is one of the finest and highest mental states I have ever experienced. I want it back. That doesn't mean the next books have just flowed. I was fortunate, being a complete A.D.D. case, to have kept at this one long enough to finish it. Note the twelve year gap between finishing the first draft and actually publishing the work.

You may have noted there is room for a sequel to this sequel, in which Duco pursues Jim, Lilith, the Doctor and Squire across revolutionary-era France. Who knows if that particular ship will ever be launched. After all, being a desert dweller, all I know about France in that time is...

As Jim Hawkins says in the beginning, "Human nature, acted upon by Providence, is at the heart of all good tales." My earnest hope is that this one did not disappoint.

Karl Moeller,

Tucson, Arizona,

February 2015