T is for Thar' She Blows! (Brucie Bonus)

Not technically a pirate-themed item, but then over here ITLAPD has been and gone, but there's still a few hours of it over the pond, so very much on the cusp of the day; here is a lovely diorama from Brian Berke up there in New York, in which an early nineteenth-century whaler (the Charles W. Morgan - originally from Pyro) get a ship-to-ship message delivered by Captain Nemo of the Nautilus!

No blurb, but Brian said;

"A few months ago we went to see the Charles W. Morgan at the Mystic Seaport Museum in Connecticut before VOVID-19 closed everything down.

The whaling ship is the last of it's type. Whale oil was not needed when oil was discovered in Pennsylvania and the fleet of whalers was mostly sunk by the Union Navy as blockades to southern ports during the Civil War.

That's the background. I recently dug out a plastic kit of the Morgan and here it is on it's maiden voyage. Sadly it was seen by Captain Nemo, that's life! "

he added . . .

"Captain Nemo wasn't a pirate though revenge against authority started many a pirate on that vocation."

The Captain being actually consumed by a hunger for vengeance and hatred of imperialism; the British Empire (a fledgling America in the recent Radio plays!) which is explained further on Wikipedia!

Also - superb photography from Brian there, I thought?

As mentioned the model has had several boxings under three labels, Pyro commissioned the original tool, Life-like got hold of it in a tranche of ex-Pyro tooling in the 1970's (?) and dropped the name, although it was retained on the runners ('sprues')!

While most recently Academy-Minicraft had a shot, although that's a 1980/90's 'recently' I fear, I don't know if Academy still have it, but Minicraft went off to concentrate on hobby tools (I think) some time ago!

And many thanks to Brian for closing 'Pirate Day', as I think the organisers have simplified the title to, this year . . . in order to expand the concept?