For more than three decades, LEGO pirate ships have occupied a special place in the LEGO catalogue. As someone who grew up in the 1980s, I can safely say I owned more than a few of them as a child. Long before adult display models were formally recognised, pirate ships were already filling that role — large, ambitious sets that felt substantial, narrative-driven, and slightly out of reach.
When the Black Seas Barracuda arrived in 1989, it didn’t just launch the Pirates theme; it established a template from which other ships would appear over the next few decades. The ship had a proper hull, cloth sails, a full crew, and enough presence to dominate a shelf or a bedroom floor. For many builders, that ship became the reference point against which every LEGO pirate ship would be judged.
Later generations found different reference points. For some, it was the Imperial Flagship. For others, it was Captain Jack Sparrow’s Black Pearl, or later ships like Queen Anne’s Revenge, which carried LEGO pirates into the age of blockbuster cinema and kept the theme culturally relevant long after the original Pirates line had disappeared.
Now, with the release of the Privateer Frigate Fortuna imminent, LEGO — via the BrickLink Designer Program — appears to have brought all of those strands together. The question isn’t simply whether Fortuna is the biggest pirate ship LEGO has ever made. It’s whether it finally represents the clearest expression of what LEGO pirate ships have always been trying to become.
What This Article Is (and Isn’t) Comparing
LEGO has released plenty of ships that borrow pirate imagery without really being pirate ships at all. This piece focuses on a narrower group: full, minifigure-scale ships that are recognisably based on real sailing vessels.
Fantasy constructs, wreck-islands, mech-ships, and partial builds are left aside. Licensed ships are included where their underlying design still follows real naval forms — something we regularly explore in our LEGO design and history features on BrickScoop.
There is one intentional outlier: LEGO Endurance. It isn’t a pirate ship, but it represents LEGO’s most serious modern attempt at a historically grounded sailing vessel. Its inclusion provides clear context for Fortuna, which — like Endurance — is clearly aimed at an adult audience, rather than the play-focused pirate ships that defined earlier eras.
LEGO Pirate Ships in Chronological Context
We’ve put together a historical table showing LEGO pirate ships from 1989 through to 2026 — a span of 37 years. Placed in release order, the list reveals a clear progression not just in size, but in intent and target audience.
| Year | Set No. | Ship | Theme | Pieces |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1989 | 6285 | Black Seas Barracuda | Pirates | 900 |
| 1989 | 6274 | Caribbean Clipper | Pirates (Imperial) | 437 |
| 1992 | 6250 | Cross Bone Clipper | Pirates | 401 |
| 1993 | 6286 | Skull’s Eye Schooner | Pirates | 912 |
| 1996 | 6289 | Red Beard Runner | Pirates | 563 |
| 2001 | 6289 | Red Beard Runner (reissue) | Pirates | 563 |
| 2002 | 10040 | Black Seas Barracuda (remake) | Pirates | 913 |
| 2004 | 6293 | Captain Redbeard’s Pirate Ship | Pirates | 740 |
| 2009 | 6243 | Brickbeard’s Bounty | Pirates | 592 |
| 2010 | 10210 | Imperial Flagship | Pirates | 1,664 |
| 2011 | 4184 | The Black Pearl (Captain Jack Sparrow’s Ship) | POTC | 804 |
| 2011 | 4195 | Queen Anne’s Revenge | POTC | 1,097 |
| 2015 | 70413 | The Brick Bounty | Pirates | 745 |
| 2018 | 71042 | Silent Mary | POTC | 2,294 |
| 2020 | 31109 | Creator Pirate Ship | Creator | 1,264 |
| 2024 | 10335 | Endurance | Icons | ~3,000 |
| 2026 | 910059 | Privateer Frigate Fortuna | BrickLink Designer Program | 4,087 |
You can explore individual ships, retirements, and aftermarket trends across this era in our LEGO set deep dives:
https://www.brickscoop.com/reviews/
Over time, LEGO pirate ships have moved from robust playsets to carefully composed display models.
From the Classic Look to Modern Techniques
The classic pirate ships of the late 1980s and 1990s shared a visual language. Strong silhouettes. Restrained colour palettes. Ships that looked like ships first, LEGO sets second.
Many modern LEGO ships — particularly licensed ones — lean toward spectacle and exaggeration. They are impressive, but often stylised around a scene rather than a vessel.
Fortuna avoids that trap.
Despite being a thoroughly modern build, its proportions, colour choices, and restraint feel closer to the Black Seas Barracuda than to something like the Silent Mary or the display set that is the Endurance. It looks like a working privateer frigate, not a fantasy prop, It doesn’t feel like a 12+ set at all, and sits far more comfortably in the 18+ category. That is, with the exception of the sails as one of the contentious issues, but more on that shortly.
Endurance as the Modern Reference Point
Endurance demonstrated that LEGO could produce a large, fully brick-built sailing ship without leaning on nostalgia or play features. Its success showed there was an audience for ships built purely as serious models. Fortuna follows the same philosophy, applying it to the pirate era in a 4,000 piece epic adult build. However, it still provides elements which are clearly “play” features – similar to those provided in the classics of the 80’s, 90’s and 00’s.
Inside the Privateer Frigate Fortuna
The Privateer Frigate Fortuna (910059) was designed by fan designer BrickPerfection and approved through the BrickLink Designer Program — a route that has produced some of the most ambitious modern LEGO builds, many of which we’ve covered in our LEGO leaks and designer program updates.
At 4,087 pieces, Fortuna is the largest pirate ship LEGO has ever released. It includes 20 minifigures, a record crew size for the theme, with the Imperial Flagship (10210) previously holding the record at nine minifigures.
The ship features:
- A fully brick-built hull with accurate curvature
- Opening gun ports with working cannons
- A functional anchor and capstan system
- Removable decks revealing a complete interior
Structurally and spatially, it is the most convincing LEGO pirate ship yet produced.
The Brick-Built Sail Problem
One decision remains contentious: brick-built sails.
Cloth sails have been part of LEGO pirate ships since the beginning. They add movement, softness, and realism that bricks struggle to replicate. Even sets like the Imperial Flagship and Black Pearl benefited enormously from fabric sails.
On Fortuna, the brick-built sails feel heavy and static. They interrupt the flow of the rigging and slightly blunt the ship’s elegance. For a display model of this scale, it’s a notable compromise — and arguably Fortuna’s biggest weakness.
It’s no surprise that many builders are already discussing custom sail solutions across the LEGO Pirates community, particularly on Reddit. The sails have emerged as the most consistently debated aspect of the build. While the overall scale, hull shaping, and interior detail have been widely praised, many see the brick-built sails as the one area where Fortuna departs too far from the classic pirate ship formula. Several comments point out that cloth sails have always been central to the visual identity of LEGO pirate ships, and that replacing them with brick-built structures makes the ship feel heavier and more rigid than it needs to be. It’s telling that, even among largely positive reactions, the most common suggestion isn’t how to modify the hull or rigging — but how quickly custom fabric sails could elevate the model.
By the time Fortuna arrives, LEGO pirate ships are no longer being designed to anchor a theme or support a wider range of sets. They exist as standalone centrepieces. That shift changes how the ship should be judged: not by how it plays, but by how convincingly it captures the presence and purpose of a working sailing vessel at minifigure scale.
Final Thoughts
The Privateer Frigate Fortuna isn’t the best LEGO pirate ship because it’s the biggest or the newest.
It earns that claim because it feels like the natural conclusion of a design journey that began in 1989. It takes the classic pirate ship ideal — clean lines, proper proportions, a sense of purpose — and realises it with modern techniques.
The brick-built sails prevent it from being perfect. But even with that caveat, Fortuna comes closer than any LEGO pirate ship before it.
If the Black Seas Barracuda showed what a LEGO pirate ship could be, Fortuna shows what it looks like when almost nothing has to be left out.
If the LEGO Privateer Frigate Fortuna is a must buy for you, you’ll need to wait until the 16th February to order it, which is the day that crowd funding starts. Sets will be limited to 2 per person, and usually take around a further 6-8 months to be shipped out.