Back in the days of yonder when the Virgin Islands were the haven of pirates, there lived one such pirate by the name of Edward Teach. Of course you may know him better as Blackbeard the Pirate. There are many legends many of you know about Blackbeard, but I want to tell you one specific story today.
One fine spring day in the piratical year of something or other, Blackbeard marooned 15 of his crew as punishment for mutiny. He choose an island halfway up the Sir Francis Drake Channel in the BVI called Dead Chest Island. It sits about a mile away from Peter Island. He left all 15 on the small island with a bottle of rum and a cutlass. Now this island had no fresh water or any type of food to sustain the sailors and even though they did not know how to swim they knew they had to try and reach the much bigger Peter Island to even have a chance at survival. Well they tried and they failed. In fact they failed so bad that their bodies started washing up on the nearest beach on Peter Island and to this day this beach is know as Deadman’s Bay.
Most people don’t realize they have actually heard this legend before, because it is the basis of the song we all love and goes something like this:
fifteen men on a dead man’s chest
yo ho ho and a bottle of rum
