Puerta Vallarta in Jalisco, Mexico doubled for 1718 Jamaica where the film is set. Jamaican locations were no longer authentic to the original setting of the period.
In a 1975 interview, Geneviève Bujold talked about her nude swimming scene. "In Puerto Vallarta I had to dive naked from the pirate ship and swim to shore. They tried all sorts of camera angles - from above the surface, underwater and then with the camera shooting half above the surface and half beneath," Bujold recalled. "It took them two days to shoot that scene. I never knew a director to make so many retakes. I think perhaps if Jim had wanted, he could have done the whole thing in less than half a day. But I didn't mind. The nude scene was pleasant and the water was warm. The days were hot and I think the others envied me for being able to splash around. I wasn't self-conscious. In fact, I enjoyed it. It felt just right. I saw the rushes and the nude shots are quite circumspect."
According to the documentary "A Pirate Ship Sails Again! The Making of Swashbuckler", this picture is the first pirate film to make use of an actual recently constructed 16th Century warship complete with cannons. The ship, a replica of Sir Francis Drake's "The Golden Hinde", was built and first launched in Devon in 1973, just a few years before this film was made.
The film features three actors who have appeared as villains in the James Bond film franchise: Robert Shaw played Donald Grant in From Russia with Love (1963), Geoffrey Holder played Baron Samedi in Live and Let Die (1973) and Roger Cudney played the captain of the Wavekrest in Licence to Kill (1989).