In chapter sixteen we read about a decision that was made by Dr. Livesey in consultation with Captain Smollett for the honest hands to abandon the Hispaniola and move to a log house inside an abandoned stockade on Treasure Island. Two reasons for making this move are as follows:
1. The stockade gave the honest hands a place where they could more easily defend themselves against the pirates.
2. More importantly, their defensive position in the cabin of the Hispaniola left them without a supply of water. Moving to the log house in the stockade would give them a plentiful, protected, source of water.
Evidence from chapter 16 of Treasure Island:
"Well, on the knoll, and enclosing the spring, they had clapped a stout loghouse fit to hold two score of people on a pinch and loopholed for musketry on either side. All round this they had cleared a wide space, and then the thing was completed by a paling six feet high, without door or opening, too strong to pull down without time and labour and too open to shelter the besiegers. The people in the log-house had them in every way; they stood quiet in shelter and shot the others like partridges."
"What particularly took my fancy was the spring. For though we had a good enough place of it in the cabin of the Hispaniola, with plenty of arms and ammunition, and things to eat, and excellent wines, there had been one thing overlooked—we had no water."
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