Saltstead sizes itself to your ship’s timbers: a machine with a real GPU is detected automatically and gets the full sea — smooth water, wakes, foam, shadows, the works — while humbler machines sail a plainer, faster one. If the frame ever stutters the game eases itself down rather than lag. V toggles fine/plain by hand at any time, and your choice is remembered.
Piracy never died. You have a sloop, the clothes you stand in, and the actual planet — every coastline is the real one, scaled down, drawn by code. You start alone: a sloop sails single-handed, and hands are hired later, for crewing prizes. Money is made at sea: board merchantmen, take their ships whole, dig up what other pirates buried. The land holds treasure but earns nothing.
Walk the deck with WASD; press T to take the tiller from anywhere on deck (T again hands it back). At the tiller A/D steer and W/S sheet the mainsail in and out. This is real sailing: you cannot sail into the wind (“in irons” — the sail flaps, you stop), a beam reach (wind on your side) is fastest, and trim matters — the MAINSHEET bar glows green when your trim suits your course. A good sailor genuinely outruns a bad one. Leave the tiller and it is lashed to hold your course; she bears away on her own rather than stall.
To stop and stay stopped, let go the anchor: Q in soundings (up to ~20 m of water — work in near a coast) with the way off her. The cable roars out the hawse, she snubs dead over the ground and swings head to wind — and rides there while you go below, dig, or leave the game entirely. Q again weighs anchor. Over deep water the lead finds no bottom; at speed the cable would part.
M opens the world chart, and the minimap is always up. In blue water a fair current carries you up to ×10 — so an Atlantic crossing takes minutes, not hours. The wind also builds as you leave the coast, and the ocean's real currents set you along a favourable route. Sighting another sail kills the current (“SAIL HO”) so ships can actually meet. The wind is procedural: steady trade winds and westerlies by latitude, so a good navigator rides the wind and the current the way the old sea-captains did — the helmsman lays the smart course for you.
Merchantmen work the coasts — square sails, no flag. Run one down, pull alongside (within a couple of boat-lengths, speeds matched) and press E to board. Her purse is yours; about a third carry a treasure map, and sometimes a sailor signs on with you. Watch the horizon for the big slow Indiamen — treble the purse — and for the blue-hulled navy corvettes, which hunt pirates and shoot back.
Your broadside fires perpendicular to the hull — there is no aiming, only seamanship: turn the ship until she bears, then F. Range is a musket-shot or so and closer is better. R swaps the load: round shot holes the hull and eventually sinks her (most cargo goes down; some floats — sail over the flotsam to hook it aboard); chain shot shreds sails and slows a runner so you can board her whole. Reloading is slow alone and quick with a crew. Damage works both ways: a corvette's iron tears your rig and hull — watch the panel. The yard at any port repairs her for coin. Boarding an armed ship is a real fight — the crews decide it by weight of numbers, so count your hands before you leap. And when you are out-gunned (in a sloop, you are): run. A well-trimmed sloop outruns any corvette afloat, and shallow water ends every chase — a warship's keel dare not follow where yours can go.
Nobody dies in Saltstead, but the sea keeps accounts, in two doses. Holed through once, the crew heaves a third of your gold overboard to keep her afloat and she limps on CRIPPLED (the damage panel says so) until a yard mends her. Holed through again while crippled, she sinks. Everyone lives — the longboat lands the crew, your treasure map, the ship’s log and a tenth of the chest at the nearest port — but the ship, the prizes astern and the rest of the gold belong to the sea. A wreck also drops you a rung down the shipwright's ladder (a sunk brig hands you a schooner; a sunk sloop captain is staked a patched sloop by the harbour), so the voyage always goes on. Two habits keep it cheap: repair the moment she’s hurt, and bank what you can’t bear to lose in Davy Jones’ Locker — banked gold is beyond the sea’s reach, wreck or no wreck. (Refreshing the page won’t save you: her hurts ride the save.)
After boarding, stay alongside and press E again to put a prize crew aboard (3 hands — your sloop sails fine without them). She falls in astern and sails with you, up to three prizes in column. Prizes are worth far more than their purses — if you have the hands, take the ship.
Two kinds of harbour work for you. Four pirate havens fly no colours — Port Royal, Nassau, Tortuga, and Île Sainte-Marie off Madagascar — and they fence prizes at full price, no questions asked. Beyond them, dockyards ring the whole world: Havana, Lisbon, Cape Town, Bombay, Canton, Acapulco, Rio and more (small anchors on the chart). Every one of them repairs, signs on hands, and keeps a shipwright — so a voyage never has to beat back to the Caribbean for a new topmast. Honest ports ask questions, though: a prize fetches only half there.
Arriving is simple: run her right up the beach — the sloop draws so little the bow takes the sand and she stops — and press E to put in. (Bigger hulls draw too much: they fetch up on the shoal offshore and E sends the longboat in — the game tells you when.) Gold buys crew, crew takes prizes: that is the game.
You start in a sloop: one gun a side, twelve berths, the fastest and shallowest thing afloat. She is not a warship — she is a predator of traders and a keeper of secrets. Survive, get rich, and any port's shipwright will build you up a seven-rung ladder: sloop → cutter → schooner → brig → corvette → frigate → galleon. Every rung buys guns, berths and speed and spends handiness and shallow water — the schooner is the last hull that beaches, and the galleon trades the frigate’s legs for six guns a side and a sterncastle. Every hull changes how you survive, and the Captain's Briefing (button below, and it pops whenever you take a new hull to sea) tells you exactly how to stay alive in yours.
From the brig up, your ship has a whole world below decks: find the dark hatch grating abaft the mainmast and press E to take the companionway down into the lantern-lit hold — ribs, beams, cargo, the spare guns, and on the galleon the great cabin’s chart table and strongboxes. E climbs back up; T runs you straight from the hold to the tiller.
Hulls are solid. Touch another ship gently and the hulls shoulder apart with curses; drive your bow in at speed and both ships take hull damage — the lighter one takes more. A galleon can stove in a schooner’s side; a sloop that rams a corvette mostly hurts herself. The navy knows it too: a hunting corvette holds off and circles at gun range rather than fouling her own bow.
A looted map inks an X on your charts. Sail within reach of the X, heave to, and press E — the longboat rows in and the crew does the shovel work while you hold the deck. A chest pays several prizes’ worth.
L opens the ship’s log — the game keeps it for you, every event stamped with the watch (Middle, Morning, Forenoon…) and your position in degrees and minutes, the way a master wrote it. N opens the star chart, drawn from the same sky over your deck. On a clear night the navigator takes a sight: the Pole Star’s height above the horizon IS your latitude — the fact sailors steered by for a thousand years. Sail south and watch Polaris sink; cross the line and the Southern Cross takes over. The wildlife navigates too: gulls mean land is near, the albatross means true blue water, and a fin in warm shallows means don’t swim.
With a course set, the helmsman sails and the ship becomes yours to run. The helmsman gets you there; the captain gets you there faster, richer and readier. U heaves the chip log against the 28-second glass (that is where “knots” come from) and starts a dead reckoning — the current is what the log can’t see, so a star sight or a landfall shows how far the sea set you. P puts the handlines out when she’s slow — cod on the Grand Banks, herring in the North Sea, and the catch sells at the next port. K runs a gun drill: a drilled crew loads up to a third faster. On the bigger hulls heavy weather springs seams below decks — go down and drive the oakum home. The sea talks back: bottles with maps and rumours, crates of cargo, castaways on rafts, whales and falling stars for the log, and your crew’s own yarns and quarrels (1/2 calls a dispute). Plunder loudly and the sea talks about you: a hot name gets hunted mid-crossing — outsail her, fight, or X jettisons a quarter of the chest and the hunter stops for the gold. Storms pay too: ride a cyclone’s outer band for the fastest water afloat — but shorten sail past a gale or the canvas tears. Long passages make the record book; beat your own best crossing.
Every mark on the world chart is real geography with a story on it, and the stories are live. In the Bermuda Triangle the fog closes in, the instruments lie — position, chart, heading, all of it — and dead ships drift full of cargo; navigate out by the sun. The Corryvreckan whirlpool off Scotland slings you round its rim, but the core will shred your rigging. The Kraken waits in the Norwegian deeps: axes and broadsides cut it loose arm by arm, or run for shallow water where it cannot follow. Dragons nest on Snowdonia — she only comes into gunshot when she stoops on your rig; wound her thrice, heave to under the crag, and the longboat brings down her hoard. The Flying Dutchman rounds the Cape of Good Hope in every storm — iron passes through her, but a bold crew can board her mid-tempest. Dive the 1715 Plate Fleet off Florida for Spanish silver. Sail up the Amazon to find El Dorado. And over the deepest water on earth waits Davy Jones’ Locker: gold consigned there is banked forever.
| W A S D | walk the deck / steer and sheet at the tiller |
| T | the helm — a tiller on the small hulls, a wheel from the brig up; take it from anywhere on deck, press again to hand it back |
| E | the doing key — board, capture, haul survivors from the water, dig, dive, bank, put in at port |
| F | fire the broadside (turn the ship until she bears) |
| R | swap the load — round shot / chain shot |
| Q | the anchor — let go in soundings / weigh and sail on |
| G | the signal rocket (King’s colours only) — the squadron converges on the pirate in sight |
| M | world chart — click it to set a course: with a hand aboard, the helmsman sails there (tacking upwind as needed) while you walk the deck |
| B | speak to the crew — walk up to any hand and ask for sailing advice, local knowledge, or the way to a legend; they answer from what the ship truly knows |
| O | out sweeps / sweeps in — row her at a slow crawl in any direction, wind be damned: the way out of irons, off a bank, or up a walled river. More hands row faster; a great hull creeps behind her longboat |
| C | belay the set course — the helm is lashed where she lies |
| N | star chart (and a sight, on a clear night — it also fixes the reckoning) |
| L | ship’s log |
| U | heave the chip log — speed by the glass; first cast takes departure and starts the reckoning |
| P | the handlines — out or in; slow her below five knots first, E strikes when something takes |
| K | gun drill — dry-fire the batteries; a drilled crew loads faster |
| I | the ship’s band — strike up or stand down. The flag picks the repertoire: fo’c’s’le shanties under the black, fife and drum under the King’s colours |
| Z | the captain’s eye — first person from the deck, riding her pitch and roll; drag to look, Z again for the quarterdeck view |
| X | jettison a quarter of the chest — only under a stern chase; the hunter stops for the gold |
| 1 / 2 | the captain’s word on a quarrel — the rope’s end, or an extra ration |
| H | this book |
| V | graphics quality — the game picks the right tier for your machine and eases off if it stutters; V overrides by hand |
| drag / wheel | look around / zoom |
The era ladder’s engine tiers (coal and diesel change what a passage asks of you), cargo running — and multiplayer: every captain their own ship, meeting on one shared ocean.