Captain Flint

Captain Flint
Treasure Island character
Long John Silver finding the skeleton of seaman Allardyce, illustration by Georges Roux, 1885
Created by	Robert Louis Stevenson
Information
Species	Human
Gender	Male
Occupation	Pirate
Title	Pirate Captain
Nationality	English

Captain J. Flint is a fictional 18th-century pirate who features in a number of novels and films. Created by Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894), Flint first appears in a children's magazine in 1881 and later in the classic adventure yarn Treasure Island (1883).

In Stevenson's book, Flint, whose first name is not given, was the captain of a pirate ship, The Walrus, which accumulated an enormous amount of captured treasure, approximately £700,000. Flint and six members of his crew bury the plunder on an island located somewhere in the Caribbean Sea. Flint then murders his six assistants, leaving the corpse of one, Allardyce, with its arms outstretched in the direction of the buried treasure.

The location of the treasure is marked by Flint on a map and entrusted to his first mate William "Billy" Bones. It later falls into the hands of the protagonist of the novel, Jim Hawkins.

The only person Flint was said to fear was his quartermaster John Silver, who later even called his parrot "Captain Flint" in mockery.

Flint is said to have died in Savannah, shouting, "Darby M'Graw - fetch aft the rum...." His death was said in the book to have been caused by the effects of rum. The inscription on the map suggests that he died in 1754.

Flint has a major part in the 1924 prequel Porto Bello Gold, by A. D. Howden Smith, which depicts the way that the treasure was captured from a Spanish galleon. In this version, Flint is described as having started his piratical career as the junior partner of Andrew Murray, an idealistic Jacobite turned pirate, who is not referenced in Stevenson's original book. Flint gradually becomes the dominant partner. The book describes how Flint secretly buries the treasure which would be recovered a generation later by the protagonists of Treasure Island.

John Drake's prequels: Flint and Silver (2008), Pieces of Eight (2009) and Skull and Bones (2010), all heavily feature Captain Flint and reveal his Christian name to be Joseph.