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 — you aim pistols and muskets, close with a sword, and fight beside your crew. 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.
Alongside an enemy, press E to grapple. WASD moves; cross either gangway to take their deck. Right-drag or Z aims with five seconds of slow-motion focus; release aim to recover. Left-click or F attacks. 1 pistol, 2 musket, 3 sword. Reloads take time; a misfire briefly delays the shot. Draw a sword while your gun reloads. C orders your crew to board or hold and cover; experience and reserves matter. H uses a purchased dressing. Crates and the mast stop shots. Enemies can board your stopped or dismasted ship. Death, or reloading during a fight, returns the entire voyage to the last checkpoint.
Put in at Port Royal, Nassau, Havana, Bristol or Cape Town and take the tender ashore. Walk to the exchange to trade rum, sugar and cloth, the tavern to recruit, the yard to repair or sell prizes, and the inn to save a free checkpoint. E uses the nearest service. The tender returns you to your ship. Shore leave is limited to these port districts.
Sinking carries its own cost, in two doses. Boarding deaths return to your checkpoint. 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.