Welcome, old friend.
The basic vanilla game is quite a bit harder than other Storm engine games in thier default mode. Basically, it is no shame to decrease the difficulty until you are comfortable with fighting. Fighting multiple opponents on the Captain level is almost always a losing proposition for low level characters unless you are really good at swordfighting.
It depends on how you are playing too. If you are a "good" captain wanting reputation, money is a bit harder to come by than if you steal things. Note that you can steal and still be "good" as long as you don't get caught, of course. In my case, for RP reasons, I don't steal when my character is good.
One way to become more skillful quickly is to fight guards in enemy towns. On Captain level you'll only be able to do this until level 10 as after that the guards instantly respawn and can overwhelm you. On lower levels, you can do it throughout the game if you like.
My favorite place to do this is Hispaniola. You can land in La Vaga, a pirate haven. You need to travel inland a bit to find the settlement, it's in the next zone from where you land. This is where you will base yourself since you'll be able to sell, resupply pistal ammo, and sleep in the tavern during the day.
The gaurds in Santo Domingo (and in all towns as far as I know) enter "night mode" at 23:00 hours. That means that there are far less of them than during the day, and also guards will not be posted at the gate to the jungle where you'll be entering. Guards go back to day mode at 06:00.
So. sleep until evening. You'll wake about somewhere between midnight and 01:00 hours. To get to Santo Domingo:
From the pirate gate take the exit that is one to the left of where you entered from the port. Next zone take the furthest left. Next zone, take the path and exit next to the cave enterance (it looks like a well of sorts), not the immediate left, but the exit just to the right of it. Next zone: full left. Then you will be in the Santo Domingo zone... keep left and you'll see the gates.
When you enter, notice that you are automatically in a defensible position. The idea is to not get overwhelmed, of course, so try to isolate single gaurds and eliminate them. This will not only raise pistols and swords, but stealth as well. A strange game mechanic indeed; you raise stealth by "getting caught".
Once you've gotten caught and killed one, exit back out the gate and accelerate game speed to +3 until 5 minutes pass. This will reset the guards so that when you re-enter the town the battle music is off and you can be "caught" once again.
If you get in trouble or don't like how things are developing (like oncoming guards moving towards you in a group), sheath your sword and run out to the jungle again.
Save often.
You WILL die. But hopefully, over time, you will be better. Even so, without a fighter officer at your side, meeting up with three rapists in the jungle means death at low level.
The key to the game is the fighting and sailing perks. They make you much better than before. The amount of points you've put in to Talent will affect how fast you get them.
In addition, most people like to concentrate on physical skills like Endurance, Strength and so on because these can greatly affect you in fighting. The other skills based on attributes that you didn't specialize (like luck, for example or insight) in will still raise up as you use them. In my opinion though, those things seem to raise at a slower rate than skills that are based on high attributes that you have selected.
Since you are playing Blood, this is considered harder than a "normal" start. Check out the walkthough in the above sticky called "preparations for a walkthrough". You can die as Blood simply by not completing something on time. It is frustrating. You might want to try a normal non-Blood start to get used to the game first if you still have difficulty.
Good luck! Sorry I like the default keys so I don't know about changing them.
