Pirates on the Sea and on the Throne

For the past nights I've been amusing myself by, among other things, watching Captain Blood, a black-and-white film with Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland, on YouTube. First I had watched the Adventures of Robin Hood, which came out three years later in 1938, in glorious Technicolor, and which is constructed of similar elements: Michael Curtiz as director, the leading couple, memorable character actors, Basil Rathbone as a wily, slender villain, a vigorous crossing of rapiers, and the armed but principled protest of helpless poverty against authority, in a historical setting.

Captain Blood was originally a novel by Rafael Sabatini, a good and intelligent writer of historical swashbucklery. He (if I remember correctly) writes mostly of clever men, either witty or embittered or both, who run afoul of authority and then strike out on their own, living by a code which has little to do with established law, until they finally find pardon. Peter Blood falls squarely into this pattern. I've forgotten the details of the book, so here are the details of the film. He is an Irishman practicing medicine in England during the reign of King James II. When the Duke of Monmouth attempts to seize the throne and the eponymous rebellion breaks out, he goes to attend a wounded man who was fighting with the rebels. The notoriously cruel soldiers of the King arrive and arrest him on the wrongful charge of treason. He appears before Baron Jeffreys, an unpleasant bigoted individual, and is condemned by him to death. There is, however, a labour shortage in the colonies, so Doctor Blood and his fellow prisoners are reprieved from being hanged and sent off to Port Royal, in the Caribbean.

Once the prisoners arrive, after a deadly journey in a ship's hold, they are sold off by auction. The niece of Col. Bishop has compassion for the prisoners, and when Peter Blood resists the indignity of the physical examination (which includes checking the teeth of the prisoners, as if they were horses), she decides to buy him herself. This niece, Arabella Bishop by name, is exasperatingly frivolous; though I like the actress considerably, she is rather young and nervous and distracted in this film, not as gentle and sympathetic as in Robin Hood (where she plays Maid Marian). In any case, Blood becomes a slave under her uncle, and is treated as badly as the others in the uncle's care. It seems surprising for a Hollywood film of that era, but there are scenes that are hard to watch as they depict brandings, whippings, etc. Altogether I find Errol Flynn slightly irritating, and have found it hard to forgive the film where he plays General Custer (They Died With Their Boots On), this film being, if memory serves me correctly, an incredibly annoying piece of lying, moralizing, flippant ahistoricism. But in this film he appears genuinely haunted by the suffering and injustice around him.

At any rate, Peter Blood has the luck to become the physician of the good-humoured but gouty governor of the island. But at length he has another argument with Col. Bishop. Just as Blood is to be flogged as a result, a ponderous deus ex machina in the shape of a Spanish galleon sails into the harbour and attacks Port Royal. The roystering Spanish soldiers (the book is disturbingly anti-Hispanic) take over the town, as the slaves find the silver lining to this cloud by paddling over to the galleon in a boat, overpowering the boozing Spaniards on board, and then sinking the longboats of the victorious soldiers as they return with their ransom. Col. Bishop rows to the galleon convey his thanks in person, unaware that it is the slaves whom he treated so cruelly who are the saviours of the city. These slaves, though they have a few other ideas, are persuaded by Blood merely to throw the colonel overboard.

Then the slaves sail off, and as they cannot return to England, they form a band of buccaneers. Peter Blood, now Captain Blood, draws up the rules: all loot must be pooled and then divided, with men who have been injured receiving extra portions; women must be respected; and the punishment for failing to observe either rule is being marooned. In the book I believe that the Captain refuses to attack English ships; in the film he is not so choosy. Anyway, the film goes on for a while after that, as Basil Rathbone makes his appearance as the French pirate Levasseur, and so on and so forth, but I don't have to tell about all of that. It is splendid action, though, and I especially like the realistic scenes on the beach and at sea. Even when it is evident that the film is taking place in a studio, there are compensations, like the delightfully detailed ship deck. But the bombardment of Port Royal in the end was no longer so fun, as it reminded me of what is occurring in Gaza. At least, in the film, the French ships responsible were conquered, and peace and justice were restored.