YES!!! I loved this book – it was so much fun to read! Buckles were being swashed left and right, booty was plundered, mizzen masts were hoisted, high seas were sailed, brigands were run through with rapiers, and love was in the air!! Captain Blood is pure, escapist, privateering fun on par with Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island. The movie version, released in 1935 and starring Errol Flynn and Olivia de Haviland, was also a lot of fun – not in the least because Levasseur was played by Basil Rathbone, who I must say was quite fetching in his snug pirate breeches and pirate shirt. What can I say – I’m a sucker for a man with an aquiline profile.

Captain Blood didn’t make me work too hard on the annotation front – just the kind of quotidian misogyny that one would expect to encounter in a pirate story written in the early 20th century. My biggest complaint was the way that Sabatini had to distinguish every. single. black. character by describing them as “negro this” and “negro that.” I can’t imagine going through life being THAT conscious of everyone else’s skin color; it takes an incredibly weak and petty person to feel the need to “other” every single black person in a novel this way. I find it amusing that white supremacists always do so much “manly” cos-playing, since their bullying language and tactics make it obvious they’re the most insecure people on the planet.
I think my favorite thing about this novel were the little Easter eggs of healthy, positive masculinity that are sprinkled throughout; that always makes me a little giddy. Many of these involved the friendship between Captain Peter Blood and his navigator, Jeremy Pitt. At one point Blood says that he can confide in Pitt because he knows that Pitt loves him, and I found that to be a very poignant contrast with what passes for “masculinity” in 2024. A man who can say that he loves his male friend is infinitely more manly than any cos-playing incel or pick-up artist. Men were so awesome before the internet happened; I want them back. I miss them. A lot.

Original text: Project Gutenberg
My annotated web version: Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
My annotated PDF version: Part 1

Part 2

History & Context board (web only)
My “Captain Blood” notes: