Continuing with my On Parade! postings in which I’m attempting to review every wargames figure I own, this time we take a look at my pirate collection.
It’s odd, isn’t it? In this age of parents not letting kids play with toy soldiers or toy guns, and schools not teaching about battles and soldiers, we still find that kindergartens and primary schools love pirates. Some of the most blood-thirsty, villainous, chauvinistic characters around, and yet little Johnny and Sally sit and make eye-patches and cardboard swords (swords?!) in class. On the other hand, maybe it isn’t so surprising – after all, pirate crews were very democratic, and feminists might approve of pirates like Ann Bonny and Mary Read.
Anyway, I’m not complaining – I love pirates! So they form part of my wargames collection, and have provided many an exciting and fun-filled game.
Yes, that’s a skeleton pirate on the left (from Moonlight Miniatures). All the other figures are by Wargames Foundry. You can see Calico Jack all in white, Bartholomew Roberts in his salmon pink coat, Anne Bonny firing a pistol in the background, Blackbeard with his eponymous black beard, and a quartermaster in his bulky green coat.
This group includes an army or marine officer in his scarlet coat, and a Royal Navy captain. There’s also a musician blowing a very long trumpet, and a merchant captain dressed in black.
Charles Morgan is on the extreme left. Behind him is a female pirate, and then an old gentleman in wig and glasses (perhaps’ a ship’s doctor?). Pirates were very multi-cultural, as can be seen by the black and the Arab chaps fighting alongside the Russian-looking guy at the back and the Scandinavian on the right.
Here is my whole collection. As with my other pics, click on it to see the enlarged version.
There are five more pirates in my collection. These date right back to my childhood in the early 70s, and are plastic cereal box freebies which I or my brother painted at some stage. They’re actually very characterful – albeit cartoonish – figures. I just keep them for old time’s sake.
That concludes the pirates section of my On Parade! postings. Next time I’ll look at another part of my wargaming collection, so keep visiting.
DRESSING THE LINES 
Very nice, indeed. It really is too bad that schools do not understand the fact that pirates were a serious threat to law abiding people. Yes, wars could be quite terrible and armies often violated codes of human decency. However, not teaching about them doesn’t make them go away or fade from existence. In fact, failing to confront that sort of past just guarantees that those experiences will repeat themselves.