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Fifteen men on the dead man’s chest—
Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!
Drink and the devil had done for the rest—
Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!
This pirate’s ditty, first sung in Chapter
I and recalled many times afterward, remains one of the best-known
legacies of
The “dead man’s chest” symbolically refers to both Billy Bones’s sea chest and Flint’s hidden treasure. The pirates’ song associates the treasure chest with a dead man rather than a living one, suggesting that the pirates are unconsciously aware that their mission will end in death and failure. In a sense, they are singing of their own downfall, almost displaying a death drive. The image of the dead man’s chest also refers to the way in which greed leads to a man’s loss of soul and also recalls the ultimate futility of finding material treasure, as all humans eventually die in the end.
