Caribbean History
Between about 1700 and 1830 the Caribbean was the richest and most fought-over stretch of water in the world. Spanish treasure fleets carried silver home from the Americas, sugar islands generated enormous wealth, and the navies of Britain, France, and Spain, along with privateers and pirates, all contended for the same sea lanes. This is the world Salty Seas draws from.
The golden age of piracy
When the War of the Spanish Succession ended in 1713, thousands of sailors and privateers were suddenly out of work, with all the skills of sea warfare and no legal outlet for them. Many turned pirate. For roughly the next fifteen years, pirate crews under captains like Blackbeard, Bartholomew Roberts, Charles Vane, and "Calico Jack" Rackham preyed on shipping from the Bahamas to the African coast.
Nassau, on New Providence in the Bahamas, became an outright pirate republic, a harbour run by and for pirate crews. Port Royal in Jamaica, once the buccaneers' favourite den, had by then become a base for the other side: the pirate hunters and the Royal Navy.
The Royal Navy in the Caribbean
Britain's answer to piracy was patient and brutal. Woodes Rogers, an ex-privateer himself, arrived at Nassau in 1718 as royal governor, offering the King's pardon to pirates who surrendered and the gallows to those who did not. The same year, Royal Navy lieutenant Robert Maynard ran Blackbeard down at Ocracoke and killed him in a boarding action. By about 1730 organised piracy in the Caribbean had been broken, though navy squadrons kept hunting pirates and escorting convoys for a century after.
For the navy the Caribbean was a hard station: hurricanes, fever, and long patrols between island bases like Port Royal and English Harbour. It was also where reputations were made. Many of Britain's most famous sea officers, Nelson among them, spent formative years on the station.
Wars with France and Spain
Piracy was only part of the story. Throughout the period, Britain fought a long series of wars with France and Spain in which the Caribbean was a major theatre:
- The War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714), fought partly over who would control Spain's American trade.
- The War of Jenkins' Ear (1739), which began over Spanish coast guards boarding British ships, and saw Vernon's capture of Porto Bello and the disastrous British assault on Cartagena.
- The Seven Years' War (1756-1763), in which Britain captured Havana from Spain in 1762.
- The American War of Independence, ending in the Caribbean with Rodney's victory over the French fleet at the Saintes in 1782.
- The Napoleonic Wars, when Nelson chased Villeneuve's fleet across the Atlantic to the West Indies in 1805 before Trafalgar.
Islands changed hands constantly. A sugar island like Martinique or Guadeloupe could be French at the start of a war, British by the end of it, and French again at the peace table.
The end of the age of sail
After 1815 the great naval wars were over. The Royal Navy turned to policing: suppressing the last pirates of the 1820s and hunting slave ships. By around 1830 steam power was appearing and the classic age of fighting sail, of broadsides, boarding actions, and the weather gage, was drawing to a close.
Salty Seas in this world
Salty Seas takes its inspiration from this era without recreating any single event. Players sail the same kind of waters: an open sea where a distant sail might be a friend, a rival crew, or something worse, and where fights are settled by broadside, grapeshot, and boarding actions with musket, pistol, and sabre.
If you would like to try those waters yourself, the game lives at /app.