Does your Age of Pirate game need a fast heavily armed man o war? Meet the 6MM scale adversary set, with not one but two galley frigates to fight out your pirate versus navy battles on the tabletop! The Galley frigate was a powerful light warship of the early 1700's. Designed to be narrow and fast, and equipped with long oars called sweeps. These ships quickly became popular among navies, among privateers, and even merchants.  The famed pirate Blackbeard knew of these powerful yet fast warships and wanted to get his hands on one. As he only had a small squadron of sloops, rather then go after a fully armed naval version he set his sights on a merchant version which tended to be comparatively under-armed and undermanned.

His eventual capture was of the French galley La Concord. He named her Queen Anne’s Revenge (often referred to as QAR for short) quickly scaled the ships armament up to reportedly as many as 40 guns.  Eventually, after a reign of terror on the high seas including using QAR to blockade Charleston for ransom, the ship ran aground, and Blackbeard chose to abandon her and return to a smaller sloop.

 Pirates were not the only captains to employ heavily armed galley frigates. Famed privateer, and later pirate hunter, Woodes Rogers used them to great effect both with purpose built naval galleys as well as up-armed merchant galleys.

Blackbeard never had to fight a ship that was the equal of the QAR. However, it is said, but not fully proven that she once almost ran afoul of the 36 gun 5th rate Scarborough  a ship of similar size, albeit one that carried some larger guns.  Records of the time indicate the Scarborough was in the vicinity of QAR in February 1717 near Nevis. The deposition of Henry Bostock recounts that the pirates "had met the Man of War on this station, but said they had no business with her, but if she had chased them they would have kept their Way."  Later, there was according to some, an alleged action against QAR off the island of St. Vincent 1718 (this is unproven)

Scarborough was captained by Francis Hume, based at Barbados, and was among the most successful pirate hunters in the West Indies fleet. On June 21, 1717, he trapped pirate John Martel at St. Croix, while they were looting prizes and refitting the 22-gun galley, John & Marshall; some of the pirates fired on Scarborough from a hastily erected four-gun shore battery, but were destroyed by the frigate’s six-pounders.

Sadly for Captain Hume, Scarborough was too large to enter the harbor, so the pirates tried escaping. Under heavy fire, John & Marshall got underway, but then ran aground. The pirates abandoned ship after setting her afire, Martel and 19 pirates escaped in one of the prize sloops and the other 100 pirates escaped into the woods. Captain Hume was left a pair of prize sloops and some cargo.

This set is designed to represent an up armed pirate galley closely patterned after QAR, and a naval or pirate hunting privateer man-o-war such as Scarborough or Delicia.

This set features two SLA 3D printed hulls and rig parts with wood dowel and floral wire masting. This kit comes un-painted, and un-assembled. The ship hulls measure aprox 10.5 x 3 centimeters each and are suited for 5 to 6MM scale war gaming.