There are conspiracy theories relating to the raid. It has been suggested that Sir Walter Coppinger, a prominent Catholic lawyer and member of the leading Cork family, who had become the dominant power in the area after the death of Sir Thomas Crooke, 1st Baronet, the founder of the English colony, orchestrated the raid to gain control of the village from the local Gaelic chieftain, Fineen O'Driscoll. It was O'Driscoll who had licensed the lucrative pilchard fishery in Baltimore to the English settlers. Suspicion also points to O'Driscoll's exiled relatives, who had fled to Spain after the Battle of Kinsale, and had no hope of inheriting Baltimore by legal means. On the other hand, Murad may have planned the raid without any help; it is notable that the authorities had advance intelligence of a planned raid on the Cork coast, although Kinsale was thought to be a more likely target than Baltimore.

This was the largest single slave raid on the Irish coast. Untold thousands of Irish ended up as slaves to the Barbary pirates.