I think [@Penny] offers a good alternative to going for the whole different world perspective. Whole settings from scratch tend to make for more questions than answers in my experience. 

We have a ready-made setting in the historical route that most people are already comfortable/somewhat knowledgeable about. We can use the map idea to make up places/legends as we please for the crew to explore. 

There's no reason we have to stick strictly to the gender roles and superstitions of the time period. That's just something else we can tweak to make for a good story. I tend to alternate between male and female characters in my games and was looking forward to writing the female navigator that was suggested. I do a fair amount of navigation in my profession so that role was appealing to me. 

My .02

~P