[1] A group of Monmouth rebels was indeed condemned to ten years' hard labor in Barbados, very similar to chattel slavery;[2] and the shifting political alliances of the Glorious Revolution of 1688 are used in the novel as a plot device to allow Blood's return to respectability.

[1] 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 ordeal.

[3] For Blood's life as a buccaneer, Sabatini used several models, including Henry Morgan and the work of Alexandre Exquemelin, for historical details.

[a] The Odyssey-like story arc of these tales was then woven by Sabatini into a continuous narrative in novel form, published as Captain Blood: His Odyssey in 1922.

[22] 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 De Ruyter) before settling down to practice medicine in the town of Bridgwater in Somerset.

In the opening chapter of Arturo Pérez-Reverte's novel The Club Dumas (1993), two characters discuss their favourite novel by Sabatini; book dealer Lucas Corso declares his preference for Captain Blood.