Lindberg 1/130 Sir Henry Morgan Pirate Ship Kit First Look

By Michael Benolkin

First Look

During the late 17th Century, the conflicts between England and Spain were still happening around the globe though Spain was more focused on the French. The British monarchy made use of Spain's distractions by recruiting key figures from the Royal Navy to lead a fleet of privateers to raid Spanish interests along the Spanish Main which ran from what is now Florida to South America. One such figure was Captain Henry Morgan whose ship participated in many actions and who would later lead many other successful actions against Spanish vessels and fortresses. Operating as privateers, Morgan and his fellow captains were allowed to keep a portion of their prizes while sending a portion back to the crown. Morgan's flagship was the Satisfaction which was lost with four other ships during the battle for Panama City in 1671. To provide the British crown with plausible deniability, these privateers flew the pirate flag during these actions but were technically only pirates to the Spanish.

Lindberg produced a nice range of pirate ships which included those of Blackbeard, Captain Kidd, Flying Dutchman, and the Satisfaction. When Round 2 Models acquired the molds for Lindberg's kits, they've been steadily getting these back on the market. Such is the case of this kit, Captain Henry Morgan's Satisfaction which, like the other ships in the series, was designed to be built by less experienced modelers. To put this into perspective, the instructions in this kit require only three pages for assembly and two for rigging.

The kit is molded in brown styrene and presented on four parts trees plus two trees molded in white styrene. The sails are styrene, not vacuformed or fabric as with more advanced models. The rat lines are also injection molded which will save numerous hours of recreating with thread or rigging line.

While you don't have to rig this model to enjoy the results, these ships used rigging for structural strength as well as to hoist and operate the sails. The two pages of rigging instructions are nicely laid out showing how to use black thread and using the kit-provided rigging blocks at the appropriate locations.

If you've ever wanted to learn how to build and rig a sailing vessel, especially a more complex configuration such as this three-masted combatant, this kit is an ideal learning tool before moving on to more complex kits. Kudos to Round 2 Models for getting these classic kits back on store shelves!

My sincere thanks to Round 2 Models for this kit sample!