Captain Blood
Rafael Sabatini · first published 1922
The film that made Errol Flynn a star overnight, from a novel by a man who wrote it in a hurry.
3 versions · 1924–1991
Michael Curtiz’s Captain Blood (1935) went to Flynn only after the intended star fell through; he was unknown, and by the end of the year he was the most famous swashbuckler alive. The film fixed what pirate movies look like for the next fifty years.
Sabatini’s novel is better than its reputation: a doctor is transported for treating a wounded rebel, and turns pirate out of exasperation rather than romance. The injustice is the point, and the sword-fighting is the reward.
1922, written by a man who had watched a real war
Sabatini spent the First World War in British intelligence as a translator. The swashbucklers he wrote afterwards sold in enormous numbers to a public that had had enough of modern warfare and wanted a war conducted by individuals with swords.
The novel opens with the Monmouth Rebellion and the Bloody Assizes of 1685, in which hundreds were hanged and hundreds more transported to the Caribbean as forced labour. The hero is not a pirate by choice; he is a doctor who was sentenced for treating a wounded man.
On screen
3Film and television, earliest first.
- 1924 Captain Blood David Smith
- 1935 Captain Blood Michael Curtiz
- 1991 Captain Blood: His Odyssey Andrei Prachenko
Versions are listed where they are documented. A century of stage productions and most broadcasts were never catalogued at all, so this is what can be shown rather than everything that was ever made.