Melee 5 should be reasonable enough. If you play a storyline, you'll need to work to earn such a high skill! The back-bladed sword is also a fairly decent one, and is what you'll find lying around in Port Royale dungeon. With those, you ought to be able to survive combat reasonably well.Hi, I had to open the game to check and the melee @ 5-5 is pretty good in spite of having just started a new game.
Do you have any of the melee abilities? You should at the very least have "Basic Defence".
You can also try to get some armour. At level 5, the best you'll get is a leather cuirass. (Or a cheap metal cuirass, but although that gives a bit better protection, it also drops your Melee skill by 1, which is why I never use it.)