The Llandoger Trow is one of the most famous pubs in Bristol. The name comes from Llandogo, a coastal town in Wales, and from a trow, a flat bottomed barge, typical of the sort that used to moor up on the Welshback. Situated on the cobbled section of King Street, the pub is a striking building with black beamed gables and its interior has hardly changed since it came into being in 1664. The Llandoger Trow oozes history but it is particularly renowned for its literary connections…

The Llandoger was supposedly the inspiration for the Admiral Benbow alehouse in Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic 1883 pirating novel, Treasure Island. Stevenson lived in Bournemouth and was by trade a travel writer; seeing as Bristol features in the book, he surely would have visited at some point and could easily have found inspiration in a pub like The Llandoger Trow. Not only that, but Stevenson used real characters from The Golden Age of Piracy (1650-1720) in the book and notably, local Bristol boy done bad, Edward Teach - more commonly known as Blackbeard! Teach was born in Bristol around 1680 and, after no doubt many late nights at the Llandoger, was a privateer off the Spanish coast. Privateers were allowed to attack any foreign ships their country was as war with and so Teach ransacked many a vessel during Spanish War of Succession. When the war ended though, he turned to outright piracy. Renowned across the seas, Blackbeard died in battle in 1718, hunted down by the Governor of Virginia.

The other literary allusion to The Llandoger Trow is that it is where Daniel Defoe met Alexander Selkirk, his inspiration for Robinson Crusoe published in 1719. In 1703, Selkirk sailed on explorer William Dampier’s second circumnavigation of the globe. Selkirk was on the second ship, argued with the captain and was left on an island in the South Pacific. On Dampier’s third circumnavigation six years later, Selkirk was rescued. He stayed in Bristol for some time before eventually returning to Scotland. A little research finds Defoe did come to Bristol several times and it seems that he did meet Selkirk at his home in St James’ Square, but there is no real reference to the Llandoger.

Another aside is that the captain who rescued Selkirk, William Dampier, lived in Queen’s Square during the 1690s and because he was the first person to circumnavigate the globe thee times, he is considered by some to be Jonathan Swift’s inspiration for Gulliver’s Travels.

So I can’t say for certain that those literary anecdotes actually took place in The Llandoger Trow but get yourself down there, me hearties, there’s certainly enough going on to make for interesting conversation over some dark ales!

Mike Clarke
Photos by Mike Clarke
Illustrations by Kyle Von Brown