While the characters and the situations they find themselves in are fictional, the story itself was loosely inspired by the 1733 slave revolt in the Danish West Indies (now known as St. John, U.S. Virgin Islands). In Africa, a number of noblemen and -women, as well as wealthy merchants, had been sold into slavery after a revolt against them, then brought to the Caribbean to work as slaves. Eventually, they rebelled against the plantation owners and managers with the purpose of retaining other African slaves from different tribes to do their labor.
Purported to be among the first of those killed was a plantation owner and his young stepdaughter.
Also, the sadistic game of “beach bowling” is alleged to be true.