Photos

The worskhops to my previous posting were views of traditional Shetland boats taken in Lerwick museum.
Also taken in the same museum are these two pictures of painted sailor's or sea chests, large wooden trunks used in the olden days by the sailors to store their gear and personal belonging. It could also be used as a seat, a table or even a bunk if long enough. The most interesting of these old chests are decorated either with carving or, like in these two examples, with paintings, here on the inside of the lid to protect it.
In this first posting, the painting shows a clipper, a sailing ship of the middle of the 19th century.
In the workshop (where the colors are better but with a bad flash reflection), two crossed flags: the American and the Russian.

A little search on the net also reveals the chest is used in the famous pirate song in "Treasure island", the novel of R.L. Stevenson. This is the extract of Wikipedia about it:
"Dead Man's Chest" (also known as Fifteen Men On A Dead Man's Chest or Derelict) is a fictional sailor's work song or "sea shanty" from Robert Louis Stevenson's novel Treasure Island (1883), and a later expanded poem by Young E. Allison (1891). It has since been used in many later works of art in various forms.
Stevenson found the name "Dead Man's Chest" in a book by Charles Kingsley. Stevenson said "Treasure Island came out of Kingsley's At Last: A Christmas in the West Indies (1871); where I got the 'Dead Man's Chest' - that was the seed". [1][2]
In Treasure Island the full song is not reported. The chorus is given as:
"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!"
The book mentions one other phrase of the song, near its end: "But one man of her crew alive, What put to sea with seventy-five."

PS Elements 5.0

And a very nice week to all. You can also dream of Stevenson's pirates...