Stevenson's Treasure Island has a one-legged West Country pirate with a parrot on his shoulder - Long John Silver. The parrot was taken from Robinson Crusoe. T

Stevenson's Treasure Island has a one-legged West Country pirate with a parrot on his shoulder - Long John Silver. The parrot was taken from Robinson Crusoe. The Arrr apparently dates from the 1930s movie versions. Stevenson wrote: "Treasure Island came out of Kingsley's At Last, where I got the Dead Man's Chest—and that was the seed—and out of the great Captain Johnson's History of the Notorious Pirates." And Long John Silver was apparently based on his friend W.E. Henley, who had a leg amputated at the knee due to TB. Incidentally, after Lister (the pioneer of modern antiseptic surgery) saved his other foot, Henley wrote the famous poem Invictus, which ends with the lines - I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul.