Friday 21 October 2011

Recently Painted No 34 Arggh!! The Pirates are a comin'



Throughout history, there have been people willing to rob others transporting goods on the water. Thousands of pirates were active from 1650–1720. These years are sometimes known as a 'Golden Age' of piracy. Famous pirates from this period include Blackbeard (Edward Teach), Henry Morgan, William 'Captain' Kidd, 'Calico' Jack Rackham and Bartholomew Roberts.
In the 17th century, buccaneers lived on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola and its tiny turtle-shaped neighbour, Tortuga. At first, they lived as hunters, and shot wild pigs with their long-barrelled muskets. Their name came from the special wooden huts called boucans where they smoked their meat.
Later, the governors of Caribbean islands such as Jamaica paid the buccaneers to attack Spanish treasure ships and ports. Some of the largest scale raids were led by the Welsh captain, Sir Henry Morgan. Although raids began in this way, with official backing, the buccaneers gradually became more and more out of control, eventually attacking any ship they thought carried valuable cargo, whether it belonged to an enemy country or not. The buccaneers had become true pirates.
These blagards were paint'd by meself, from Peter Pigs range of minis, I raised the banners from Warflag, choosin a pretty little number for each unit,  they be painted for me hearty Postie, who's got a great looking ship for 'em to sail the seven seas in. But 'es gonna use'um for priviteers to fight the darstadly English for the War of 1812, as e says they did fight at The Battle of New Orleans in 1815, commanded by Jean Lafitte and his older brother Pierre!!! And yes.... I will keep on taking the tablets????

Ray




Jean and Pierre Lafitte






33 comments:

  1. I saw this title and I had to come over here. So pirates started out as mercenary's. I didn't know that. Very nice pieces indeed. Do you guys have battles between pirates and other ships? If you do, please post them.

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  2. I lass, when we do I'll post 'em for ya!

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  3. Here be pirates, ARGHHH!!!

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  4. Very nice. I especially like the swivel gunners.

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  5. Very nice I really like the deck bases you've done

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  6. nice work Ray, I've bought females piretes in the same Peter Pig range. why don't you add them too, they are beatiful miniatures
    luca

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  7. Nice one..very nice they aRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRe
    Cheers
    paul

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  8. Nice looking figs Ray. Evferyone loves a pirate.

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  9. Nice variety of color schemes on the 'scallywags',Ray. Plus the different basing for both ship duty and land escapades is great.

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  10. Great stuff, love your flags, what kind of scales is that?

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  11. Great choice of flags, makes for a very unusual unit.

    Regards,
    Matt

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  12. It's cool to see pirates done as units, rather than individually based, makes for something different! It's lovely stuff as well

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  13. Those little fellas with the hand canons are quite brave, I bet it would be difficult to fire one of those.

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  14. Very nice painting Ray. I really like the guns and crews.

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  15. Very cool. You amaze me with both the speed and quality of your painting! I especially like the ship bases.

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  16. Very nice Ray, I like 15mm stuff , Pirates, even better Aye!!

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  17. Love the hand gunners on the deck basing, great work Ray.

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  18. Really nice Ray. Deck basing is very cool. Look forward seeing them in action

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  19. Very nice paint job! Like the bases too!

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  20. Arggh!?? Are your pirates dying? ;-)

    Great stuff as always Ray!

    Cheers,
    Jason

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  21. Yes LaFitte's Pirates stood alongside Andrew Jackson's regulars, volunteers and militia to utterly destroy the famous redcoat Peninsular veterans at the battle of New Orleans and General Pakenham's body was stuffed in a rum barrel to pickle and preserve it for the 6-week journey back home.

    According to the Johnnie Horton song they used alligators from the Louisiana Bayou for cannon also, so the 'hand cannon' are not the most far-fetched Hollywood aspect after all.

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  22. Incredibly beautiful work and Very nice paint job Ray...

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  23. Good job; the planked bases are well done.
    I finally retrieved my uniform book, but it has no pertinent information for your NYW uniform chart.

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  24. Arrr, me buccaneer hurts like buccan 'ell!

    Tee hee!

    Why do pirates have a hard time learning the alphabet? Because they spend so much time at C!!

    Chortle!

    There's more where that came from but I'd better stop now.

    Lovely little unit, Ray!

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  25. Thanks for all the comments chaps!!
    It does me me chuckle at the mention of a Pirate, 'n everyone be talkin' like a Pirate!!!
    @Mike - Thanks for taking the time to look, shame you didn't have anymore info.

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  26. I found mine too, under the other stuff, but have not yet looked.

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  27. Great work - thanks for the smile :)

    Arrrggh !

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