Tag Archives: Pirate Ships

LEGO Icons 10365 Captain Jack Sparrow’s Pirate Ship – A shiny Black Pearl [Review]

It’s been 22 years since Johnny Depp donned dreadlocks and eyeliner and put on his best Keith Richards impression and sailed into cinematic record books with the blockbuster Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. If you thought that name was clunky, hold LEGO’s grog. Icons 10365 Captain Jack Sparrow’s Pirate Ship brings back the Black Pearl, last seen in brick in 2011, as a premium display set. Is it worth every piece of eight to add this set to your LEGO fleet? Guest reviewer Jacob Manahan got a chance to dig up this treasured ship early and is here with our review.

LEGO Icons 10365 Captain Jack Sparrow’s Pirate Ship | 2862 Pieces | Available September 12 to Insiders (Sept 15 to all) |US $379.99 | CAN $449.99 | UK £299.99

Our review of the Black Pearl follows

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Set sail again for the Caribbean with LEGO Icons 10365 Captain Jack Sparrow’s Pirate Ship [News]

The Black Pearl? Didn’t she last sail off LEGO shelves back in 2012? Well, ye best start believing in ghost stories, as the Black Pearl is back, bigger and bolder, as LEGO Icons 10365 Captain Jack Sparrow’s Pirate Ship. In addition to an awkward name change, the new Black Pearl (let’s agree that she’s still called that) is assembled from 2,862 pieces, up from 804 in her maiden voyage, adding detail, a larger scale, and a display stand. At 25 inches in both length and height, the Black Pearl is comparable in scale to 71042 Silent Mary, the last big Pirates of the Caribbean set (and one of my “grail” sets that I kick myself for not getting back in the day).

Priced at $379.99, Captain Jack Sparrow’s Pirate ship continues a trend of bigger sets and bigger price tags, joining Batman, Harry Potter, Willy Wonka, and Wicked in a crowded September lineup. We’ll be back soon with our full review to give you our take on whether ye’ll be wantin’ to commandeer the Black Pearl when she arrives on September 12 for LEGO Insiders and September 15 to all.

Insiders will also receive Jack Sparrow’s Compass as a free gift with purchase, while supplies last.

LEGO Icons 10365 Captain Jack Sparrow’s Pirate Ship | 2862 Pieces | Available September 12 to Insiders (Sept 15 to all) |US $379.99 | CAN $449.99 | UK £299.99

Cannons at the ready, thar be pirates about!

White sails, black hearts on a sea of bricks

Contrary to what you may have seen in popular films and TV, pirates wouldn’t sail under black sails. They’d more likely rig their ships with sails like the ones in this incredible tall ship from Luke (@cathedralofbricks). Luke has been building with typhoon intensity these past few months, but so far all of his works have been castles (as he shared with us in our interview last month). For a change of pace, he tests out new waters and rekindles an old love for the golden age of piracy. Luke proves every bit as adept at sea as he is with gothic stonework. While incorporating many modern elements and techniques, some elements, like the hull pieces and the mast over the stern are straight from vintage LEGO Pirate ships. Having just finished building the One Piece Going Merry, I feel a powerful nostalgia for these dedicated nautical pieces from LEGO’s past.

While the brickwork is all LEGO, Luke finishes the pirate vessel with custom sails and well-researched rigging. Tying all those tiny knots must have been as much work as building the ship itself! And for the water, it’s smooth sailing over azure sea with frothy white bricks trailing in the wake. I love the mix of curved white parts around the hull conveying the speed of a ship under full sail.

One Piece pirate ship? How about 4,000 Piece?

As excited as we are for the newly revealed One Piece sets, we still hold out hope that LEGO will return to the Age of Sails with sets that aren’t infused with clowns and talking reindeer. For minifig-scale ships, there are few LEGO shipwrights as skilled as Saran (MocYourBricks) who for years has been upgrading designs from LEGO’s past with an AFOL’s eye for detail and custom sails and rigging. This photo comes from bee.brick, who recreated the Black Pearl and Queen Anne’s Revenge from Saran’s instructions. with extra flourishes, like brick-built canon blasts.

Built from 4,000 pieces, the Queen Anne’s Revenge is a thing of beauty, and even if the roughly $1000 cost of sourcing the parts and instructions is out of your price range, you can vicariously experience the joy of building it in this one-hour “speed build.”

Yo ho ho and a LEGO bottle of rocket fuel

Seeking their fortunes across the stars, this renegade band of LEGO rapscallions aren’t just smugglers. They’re full-on space pirates, at least according to builder Librarian-Bot. Inspired by the 1993 set 6268 Renegade Runner, this creation was inspired by the “Space Pirates – Back to the Caribbean Galaxy” competition happening over at Eurobricks. The ship’s sail has been transformed into a large beveled wing, still striped in black and white. A large rocket engine has been added to the schooner’s aft section, and the large cannon mounted below the ship looks devastating!

Check out the engines and figs!

There are pirates aplenty amid these LEGO islands made from 800,000 bricks

You know you’re in for a seriously large LEGO creation when four great builders (Joshua Morris, Rod Fiford, Gavin Rich, and Handoko Setyawan) put their heads together on a pirate scene. And with the Cerulean Straits clocking in at a fully-detailed nine square meters, they did not disappoint! All 144 baseplates of brick were on display recently at Brickvention in Melbourne, Australia. I’ll do my best to cover as much of the 800,000 bricks as I can….

Click here to discover the treasures buried within this build!

Another 100-stud long ship – but not the kind you’re thinking of

We’ve featured a lot of big ships recently, what with it having been SHIPtember and all, but they’ve all been the space-faring kind. If you want 100-stud long behemoths that sail the seas rather than the stars, it can be a month of false dawns. Isaiah Durand is here to save the day with this frankly jaw-dropping beast! Christened the Buccaneer’s Dread, it took three years to plan and build. It’s almost as long as it is tall, at a whopping 4 foot 3 inches, or 1.3 metres for the metrically inclined. That’s the height of a small child!

There are some minifigures in the above picture to give you a sense of scale, but it doesn’t really do the details justice. So let’s take a closer look…

Sailing the seven suds at bathtime

We love a good pun here at TBB, almost as much as we love awesome LEGO builds. So when you create a bathtime-themed pirate ship crewed by the Rubber Duccaneers, it’s going to grab our attention. As you can see, Random Vector has done just that! This build is chock-a-block with charm. Aside from the excellent wordplay in the title (seriously, I’m a bit jealous of that one), Random Vector has really committed to every detail here. Of course there’s the bathtubs that double as pirate ships, but equally the rubber ducky figureheads are a cute touch that unifies the three vessels. The bathroom furniture on the flagship consists of a shower head at the stern, and a plug doubles as an anchor. Genius! The bubbly setting is so effectively done using various transparent pieces, and really elevates this build from good to great. And, naturally, these cannons fire bath bombs, not cannonballs. So if you don’t want to get hit by one… Duck!

Setting sail on a microscale sea

Louis of Nutwood shows us sometimes simple techniques can be the most effective. A sprinkling of 1×1 round plates around this microscale ship does a fantastic job of illustrating the wake of the craft as it cuts through the water in search of adventure. A micro portion of rum for all on board!

Cluckery on the high seas

LEGO builder and The Brothers Brick alumn Benjamin Stenlund acquired some chickens recently. This inspired him to build The Bad Egg, a plucky pirate ship inhabited entirely by chickens. As Ben tells it, here we see Captain Cockerel and his bloodthirsty buck-buckaneers prowl the seas in search of gold. Golden corn, that is. The plume of tail feathers at the aft of the ship is a brilliant touch and the chicken masthead is also quite funny, but I like that one of the crow’s nests is an actual nest. Ben tells us he enjoys watching the real-life chickens roam the yard and do their thing, which is mostly eating and pooping. It’s about as productive as some humans get, truth be told.

It’s always great to check in on how an old friend is doing. Have a gander at our archives to see why we think Benjamin Stenlund is still the cock of the walk around here.

Cresting the wave of a pirate’s life

Beware any ship what flies the crimson flag! This LEGO ship by Ralf Langer sails on the crest of two seas, ever searching for more riches. The ship is beautifully crafted, but make no mistake–this is a pirate ship! Besides, who says pirates can’t have nice things? The ship is loosely inspired by the Golden Hind, the galleon captained by Sir Francis Drake during his circumnavigation of the globe in the late 16th century. The sails are brick built, allowing for greater detail to capture the way they catch the wind. The ship itself sits atop two curved LEGO seas, elements reused from some of Ralf’s past builds. One has a town under threat of cannon fire, while the other has water stained with blood and a town burning from a pirate attack. The captain’s quarters bear remarkable stained glass windows, and that intricate detailing in the ship’s woodwork is exquisite!

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Let’s go window shopping

Ralf Langer teased us a while ago with the stern of a beautiful LEGO ship. In the comments he mentioned that it was actually never going to be a full ship, but a city made out of ship parts. And here it is in all it’s gloomy glory. This creation might as well be called a study of ship windows as are several lovely techniques for you to choose from. Let’s zoom in on them.

Both brown ships feature the same technique using a net between a layer of trans plates and trans tiles. This creates a stained glass effect which is just stunning. A lot of variation in colour can be achieved by using different colored trans elements. The dark brown ship with the blue glass windows uses a different technique. Here we have the 1967 fence filled with bars stuck through a technic pin.

The last window technique I want to highlight is the one on the building on the right. It uses small smooth tires filled with trans cheese slopes. This city of ships also features a lot of cleverly designed lanterns with some clever parts usage. I can spot wands, link chain and link tread. The only question I have now is: Will this connect to my Ninjago City?