EricCWelch

McBooks Press began some years ago issuing a new “Classics of Nautical Fiction” series (pant! pant!) No doubt related to the success of the O’Brian books. Sabatini wrote several swashbuckling tales during the early twentieth century. Captain Blood was one turned into a famous movie starring Errol Flynn. Typical of many books written before the enlightened days of political correctness, it suffers from racism and sexism. The romance is a bit mushy, but what the heck, it’s a rousing good story. Peter Blood is a doctor in England who makes the mistake of aiding a rebel fighting King James. He is charged with treason, comes within an inch of hanging, is sent to Jamaica as a slave, then sold to the treacherous and meanspirited Colonel Bishop. The colonel’s niece Arabella — ravishingly beautiful, of course — takes a special interest in Blood, who manages to escape bondage with numerous of his fellow slaves when Spaniards ransack the town. Blood takes a Spanish ship by force and becomes a pirate, preying only on the wicked Spanish, mind you; after all, he’s still a noble Englishman at heart, and he names his new ship. . . well, you guess. In the end he . . . well, you guess. It’s all in rousing good fun and is saved from being completely trivial by Blood’s character, who has some wicked ripostes and dialogue. Faced with an obnoxious French admiral who demands that Peter’s captains be more obsequious, Blood responds: “I am happy to assure you that the reminder is unnecessary. I am by way of accounting myself a gentleman, little though I may look like one at present; and I should not account myself that were I capable of anything but deference to those whom nature or fortune may have placed above me, or to those being placed beneath me in rank may labour under a disability to resent my lack of it.” Beats television any day. No commercials either. Try it instead of the Super Bowl, no wait, I guess that’s already over or is it?