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According to Robert Neeser, "it was in the course of an after-dinner conversation that the thought of writing a romance of the sea first came to Fennimore Cooper. The table talk had turned on the authorship of the Waverly Novels, which, in 1822, was still a matter of some uncertainty, and on its most recent volume, The Pirate, which had been published in December of the preceding year. The incidents of this story were brought forward as a proof of the thorough familiarity with sea life of the author, whoever he was. But Cooper contended that The Pirate was not the work of a sailor, but that of a landsman. His listeners could not be convinced by his arguments. He therefore determined to convince them by writing "a, sea tale, to show," he said, "what can be done in this way by a sailor." (Neeser, 1917) Rather than talk about the reasons men take to the waters, he would show the gritty reality of life on deck.

Indeed, Cooper was correct. Sir Walter Scott did not draw his inspiration for The Pirate from any events he witnessed at sea. Rather, Scott drew on his memories of a voyage to the Northern Isles in 1814, as guest of a commission inspecting Scotland's lighthouses. He thus drew his chronicled events from myths he heard from those on land, rather than his experiences on the water. He chose to set The Pirate in the seventeenth century in a remote part of the Shetland Islands, rather than on a boat. The pirate of the title, Basil Mertoun, is now conveniently retired. He turned to a life of thievery because of his anger at his wife when she betrayed him, not out of a desire to make a living. Merton lives as a tenant of Magnus Troil on land, with his son Mordaunt, whom he is not certain even belongs to him. (Walter Scott Digital Archive is an Edinburgh University Library, 2004)

Magnus's daughters Minna and Brenda form the main love interests of the tale, and their significance in the plot, such as when Minna is horrified when Cleveland open-heartedly confesses to her that he is a pirate, and Brenda's alliance with Mordaunt also shows how romance, rather than the realities of life at sea drives the plot. In fact, Mordaunt's lack of a corresponding figure in Cooper's subsequent sea tale highlights how issues of great importance to Scott, such as Merton's inability to reconcile himself to his lost