The series is based on the real-life adventures of Graf (Count) Felix von Luckner, who commanded the sailing commerce-raider Seeadler for the German Navy in 1916-17. Von Luckner captured and sank 15 Allied merchant ships in the Atlantic and South Pacific oceans between January and July 1917, with only one person being killed, accidentally. Seeadler eventually ran aground on an atoll in the Tahiti group of islands, but von Luckner wasn't ready to give up his war - he sailed to Fiji in an open boat hoping to capture another ship to resume raiding but was eventually arrested and imprisoned in a PoW camp in New Zealand - from which he escaped three months later, stealing another ship, though he was recaptured a few days later and spent the rest of the war in New Zealand.