This has been a firm favourite since I delightedly found a second-hand 1977 copy back in the '90s. Great find though it was, that edition was in a small format that compressed the lines in Peake's illustrations, dropping detail and, where colour was added, it was a vivid but disappointingly flat, orange-yellow only.
When I finally upgraded to the large format Walker Books edition - what a revelation!
Arrived today from Great Britain. I read Titus Groan last week, and I wanted to see more of Peake‘s illustrations.
pick#HopIntoSpring Day 5: Few people may be aware that Mervyn Peake of the Gormenghast Trilogy fame has actually written and illustrated a picturebook for children about a Captain Slaughterboard who has dropped #anchor in a strange land and lived there. At the time of publication, this was decried as too weird and “highly inappropriate” for kids. Most naturally, I adored it. Full review here: https://gatheringbooks.org/2016/12/05/monday-reading-34/
Captain Slaughterboard Drops Anchor | 
What's it about? The illustrations, really. They are absolutely integral to the book, which has little in the way of plot of narrative. Such as it is, it's a slight tale of the pirates discovering an island full of strange creatures, one of which becomes the object of the Captain Slaughterboard's rather obsessional ... 3y