Underlying book story — recording-specific coverage unverified
Coverage is limited to the scope described in this write-up. Recording changes, further installments or an unwritten ending may remain outside it.
This synopsis covers the underlying book linked to this recording: Captain Blood. Recording-specific abridgements, added material or adaptation changes have not been verified.
The protagonist is the sharp-witted Dr. Peter Blood, a fictional Irish physician who had had a wide-ranging career as a soldier and sailor (including a commission as a captain under the Dutch admiral Michiel de Ruyter) before settling down to practice medicine in the town of Bridgwater, Somerset. The story is told from the perspective of an omniscient narrator, who enables the reader to see the thoughts and views of many different characters. The narrator—perhaps meant to be Sabatini himself—claims to have acquired the story from the ship's logs of Blood's longtime companion Jeremy Pitt.
The book opens with Blood attending to his geraniums while the town prepares to fight for James Scott, 1st Duke of Monmouth. He wants no part in the Monmouth Rebellion, but after being urgently summoned to attend to one of the rebels wounded at the Battle of Sedgemoor, Peter is arrested. During the Bloody Assizes, he is convicted by the infamous Judge Jeffreys of treason on the grounds that "if any person be in actual rebellion against the King, and another person—who really and actually was not in rebellion—does knowingly receive, harbour, comfort, or succour him, such a person is as much a traitor as he who indeed bore arms."
The sentence for treason is death by hanging, but King James II, for purely financial reasons, has the sentence for Blood and other convicted rebels commuted to transportation to slavery in the Caribbean. Upon arrival on the island of Barbados, Blood is bought by Colonel William Bishop, initially for forced work in the Colonel's prison farms but later hired out by Bishop when Blood's skills as a physician prove superior to those of the local doctors. During his period of servitude, Blood wins the pity and sympathy of Arabella, Colonel Bishop's niece.
When a Spanish force attacks and raids Bridgetown, Blood escapes with a number of other convicts (including former shipmaster Jeremy Pitt, the one-eyed giant Edward Wolverstone, former gentleman Nathaniel Hagthorpe and two Royal Navy veterans, former petty officer Nicholas Dyke and former master gunner Ned Ogle). The escapees capture the Spaniards' ship, turn its guns on the returning Spaniards and sail away to become some of the most successful buccaneers in the Caribbean, hated and feared by the Spanish but always sparing English ships. Colonel Bishop, humiliated by Blood's daring escape and growing fame as a buccaneer, devotes himself to capturing and executing Blood.
After many adventures and the Glorious Revolution, Blood and his remaining fellow rebel-convicts are pardoned. As a reward for saving the colony of Jamaica from a French assault, he is appointed its governor in place of Colonel Bishop, who had abandoned his post to hunt for Blood, and the novel ends with the implication that Blood will not only marry Arabella but will also generously forgive Bishop.
The protagonist is the sharp-witted Dr. Peter Blood, a fictional Irish physician who had had a wide-ranging career as a soldier and sailor (including a commission as a captain under the Dutch admiral Michiel de Ruyter) before settling down to practice medicine in the town of Bridgwater, Somerset. The story is told from the perspective of an omniscient narrator, who enables the reader to see the thoughts and views of many different characters. The narrator—perhaps meant to be Sabatini himself—claims to have acquired the story from the ship's logs of Blood's longtime companion Jeremy Pitt.
The book opens with Blood attending to his geraniums while the town prepares to fight for James Scott, 1st Duke of Monmouth. He wants no part in the Monmouth Rebellion, but after being urgently summoned to attend to one of the rebels wounded at the Battle of Sedgemoor, Peter is arrested. During the Bloody Assizes, he is convicted by the infamous Judge Jeffreys of treason on the grounds that "if any person be in actual rebellion against the King, and another person—who really and actually was not in rebellion—does knowingly receive, harbour, comfort, or succour him, such a person is as much a traitor as he who indeed bore arms."
The sentence for treason is death by hanging, but King James II, for purely financial reasons, has the sentence for Blood and other convicted rebels commuted to transportation to slavery in the Caribbean. Upon arrival on the island of Barbados, Blood is bought by Colonel William Bishop, initially for forced work in the Colonel's prison farms but later hired out by Bishop when Blood's skills as a physician prove superior to those of the local doctors. During his period of servitude, Blood wins the pity and sympathy of Arabella, Colonel Bishop's niece.
When a Spanish force attacks and raids Bridgetown, Blood escapes with a number of other convicts (including former shipmaster Jeremy Pitt, the one-eyed giant Edward Wolverstone, former gentleman Nathaniel Hagthorpe and two Royal Navy veterans, former petty officer Nicholas Dyke and former master gunner Ned Ogle). The escapees capture the Spaniards' ship, turn its guns on the returning Spaniards and sail away to become some of the most successful buccaneers in the Caribbean, hated and feared by the Spanish but always sparing English ships. Colonel Bishop, humiliated by Blood's daring escape and growing fame as a buccaneer, devotes himself to capturing and executing Blood.
After many adventures and the Glorious Revolution, Blood and his remaining fellow rebel-convicts are pardoned. As a reward for saving the colony of Jamaica from a French assault, he is appointed its governor in place of Colonel Bishop, who had abandoned his post to hunt for Blood, and the novel ends with the implication that Blood will not only marry Arabella but will also generously forgive Bishop.
Sources and content license
Source and revision history ↗ · Underlying book identified by the catalog’s explicit book_slug relation. Exact source annotation 770. Adapted from Wikipedia contributors, Captain Blood (novel). Section headings and formatting adjusted. · Content license