Captain Blood (1924 film) on the verge of taking over the historic Vitagraph Company. When Warners decided to remake "Captain Blood" in 1935 with Errol Flynn, they would have owned the screen rights to the Sabatini novel which came as part of the Vitagraph buyout. Captain Blood (1924 film) Captain Blood is a 1924 American silent historical adventure film produced and distributed by The Vitagraph Company of America. The film is based on the novel, "Captain Blood, His Odyssey", by Rafael Sabatini, and was directed by David Smith, brother of Vitagraph founder Albert E. Smith. Early silent film hero J. Warren Kerrigan stars along
Captain Blood (novel) Pitman, a surgeon who tended the wounded Monmouth rebels and was sentenced to death by Judge Jeffreys, but his sentence was commuted to penal transportation to Barbados where he escaped and was captured by pirates. Unlike the fictional Blood, Pitman did not join them, and eventually made his way back to England where he wrote a popular account of his adventures. For Blood's life as a buccaneer, Sabatini used several models, including Henry Morgan and the work of Alexandre Exquemelin, for historical details. Sabatini first introduced the character Captain Blood in a series of eight short stories in "Premier Magazine"