Alec Clunes was originally cast as Dan Tempest, but prospective US buyers thought he was "too British" for American viewers. Clunes was recast as Governor Woodes Rogers.
In The Ladies (1956), Robert Shaw can be heard singing "Farewell and adieu to you fair Spanish ladies," nearly twenty years before he would sing the same song in Les Dents de la mer (1975).
Many years after making "The Buccaneers," Robert Shaw would be cast again as a pirate in the Hollywood movie, "Swashbuckler."
The original star of the series was gong to be William Sylvester.