Quick answer: MGM+’s Treasure Island is fiction, not a documentary, but its themes connect to real maritime history: crews formed around prize money, pirate captains relied on intimidation and shifting alliances, women such as Anne Bonny and Mary Read entered the historical record, and Black sailors were part of the Atlantic world in which piracy operated. The key distinction is chronology: the period most often called the Golden Age of Piracy is usually placed roughly between the 1650s and 1730s, while the new adaptation’s promotional material describes an adventure set later. The show draws on the era’s legacy rather than recreating one specific pirate crew.
What was the Golden Age of Piracy?
Historians do not use one universally fixed start and end date, but the term commonly describes a broad wave of Atlantic and Indian Ocean piracy from the late 17th century into the early 18th century. The period followed decades of European imperial competition, privateering, expanding maritime trade, and warfare. When wars ended, some experienced sailors found fewer legal opportunities at sea; others turned to piracy for profit, survival, or a combination of motives.
Piracy was not a romantic occupation. It depended on taking ships and cargo by threat or force, and it could bring brutal punishment when authorities caught the people responsible. Popular stories often emphasize treasure chests and colorful flags. The historical record points just as strongly to commerce, labor, violence, colonial power, and the constant risk of capture.
The Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History provides useful background on figures such as Edward Teach, better known as Blackbeard, and on women pirates Anne Bonny and Mary Read. Its historical material is a good corrective to the idea that every familiar pirate image comes directly from a contemporary eyewitness account.
Blackbeard shows how legend and evidence became tangled
Blackbeard’s reputation was built partly on calculated theater. Accounts describe him wearing his beard long and using slow-burning fuses to create a frightening appearance before a fight. He operated around the Caribbean and the Atlantic coast of North America, and he was killed in 1718 during a confrontation with British forces near Ocracoke Island in present-day North Carolina.
That mix of real violence and deliberate performance is relevant to Long John Silver. Silver is a fictional character, but the idea of a pirate who understands that reputation can be as powerful as a weapon has a historical basis. Fear could encourage a merchant crew to surrender before a battle damaged the ship, the cargo, or the pirates themselves. A threatening image was useful precisely because it could reduce the need to fight.
Anne Bonny and Mary Read: the women behind the pirate legend
Anne Bonny and Mary Read sailed with the crew associated with John “Calico Jack” Rackham. They were captured in 1720 and tried for piracy in Jamaica. Contemporary accounts say both women were pregnant when sentenced, and their executions were deferred. Details of their lives are difficult to verify independently because much of what popular culture repeats comes from a sensational 1724 book commonly attributed to Captain Charles Johnson, whose true identity remains uncertain.
Their stories are important, but they should not be treated as proof that women routinely held equal positions in pirate crews. Women pirates were unusual in the surviving record. Their presence does, however, complicate the familiar idea that the maritime world of the period was made up only of men.
The MGM+ adaptation’s expanded role for Bess Hawkins is a modern creative choice, not a direct retelling of Bonny or Read. The historical connection is thematic: both the novel’s new adaptation and the real record invite audiences to look beyond the simple image of a male pirate captain and consider who makes decisions, who has access to power, and who must survive in a dangerous system.
What the Jolly Roger actually did
There was no single universal pirate flag. Different crews used different designs, and the skull-and-crossbones image became famous partly because it communicated a threat quickly. A flag could signal that resistance would be dangerous, but it was also part of a negotiation: surrender might spare a crew from a fight, while resistance could bring violence.
That practical purpose is easy to miss in modern pirate fiction, where flags often serve as decoration. In a historical reading, the flag is closer to a warning sign. Its power depended on what sailors believed would happen if they ignored it.
Charles Vane and the danger of pirate alliances
Pirate crews were not always united by loyalty. Disputes over leadership, risk, targets, and the division of captured goods could fracture alliances. Charles Vane was one of the better-known pirates operating around the Caribbean and the Bahamas in the early 1700s. His career illustrates how quickly a crew’s fortunes could change when a captain lost support or refused to follow the wishes of the people sailing with him.
This is one of the strongest historical parallels for Treasure Island. The threat aboard the Hispaniola is not just an outside enemy chasing the ship. It is the possibility that people sharing the same deck may have different goals. Mutiny and divided loyalties were not inventions of adventure fiction; they were real risks in a world where authority, profit, and survival collided.
Were pirates really a diverse group?
The Atlantic maritime world connected Europe, Africa, the Caribbean, and the Americas through trade, war, enslavement, and forced migration. People of African descent were present aboard ships in many roles, including as enslaved people, coerced laborers, sailors, and—in some cases—pirates. The circumstances varied sharply from crew to crew, and the surviving evidence does not support reducing that complex history to one simple percentage or a single universal experience.
David Oyelowo’s casting as Long John Silver gives the adaptation an opportunity to explore a dimension often minimized in older screen versions. The series remains a fictional reimagining, so its characters should not be treated as evidence that a particular historical pirate lived exactly as the show portrays him. The more useful connection is that the real maritime world was shaped by race, empire, labor, and the struggle for freedom as well as by treasure and violence.
Where the series and history diverge
Robert Louis Stevenson published Treasure Island in the 1880s, long after the period most commonly called the Golden Age of Piracy. The novel’s characters, treasure map, and central voyage are fictional. The MGM+ version is another adaptation of that literary story, not a dramatization of a documented expedition.
The distinction matters because historical pirate portraits, flags, and shipwrecks can add context without proving that a fictional scene happened. The show’s strongest historical echoes are its interest in shipboard power, intimidation, divided loyalties, and the way stories about pirates are shaped by both evidence and legend.
What viewers should take away
The real Golden Age of Piracy was messier than the myth: sailors worked within violent economies, pirate crews could be unstable, and the stories that survived were often written by outsiders or shaped for dramatic effect. Those realities make the world of Treasure Island feel recognizable without making the series a history lesson in disguise.
For more on the adaptation’s characters and premiere, read our Treasure Island Episode 1 ending explained and our guide to David Oyelowo’s Long John Silver compared with classic portrayals.
Watch the official Treasure Island trailer
The trailer shows the series’ fictional world and visual approach. It should not be confused with archival footage of real pirates.
Sources and further reading
- Paramount+ UK & Ireland: Treasure Island series guide and first-look images
- Playground Entertainment: official Treasure Island production page
- Smithsonian National Museum of American History: Edward Teach (Blackbeard)
- Smithsonian National Museum of American History: Female Pirates
- Project Gutenberg: A General History of the Pyrates (1724)
- University of Michigan Clements Library: A General History of the Pyrates and the Golden Age
By Shivam Das
