BlueBrixx Pirates Island: Island with Hideout Set 105130

BlueBrixx's Pirates Island: Island with Hideout is a BlueBrixx-Specials model built from 966 blocks — a modular rock island with a concealed hideout. Designed by Marco P., released 2022. No stickers or printed parts. Instructions are supplied as a free download after registering on the BlueBrixx website.

Two pirate island systems, and they are not the same one

This is the thing to get right before ordering, because BlueBrixx has two modular pirate ranges and both are by the same designer.

Pirates Island is this one — sets 105130 and 105266, natural rock islands with caves and hideouts.

Governors Island is the other — sets 105181, 105128, 105326 and 105327, a settled colonial island with a harbour, a tavern, a guard tower and a pergola.

They share a designer and a theme and they are separate product lines. Check the set number, not the picture.

The hideout is the historically accurate part

Pirate bases were real, and they were not caves in cliffs — they were towns. Port Royal in Jamaica, Nassau in the Bahamas, Île à Vache, Tortuga: places with harbours, taverns, merchants willing to buy stolen cargo and officials willing to look elsewhere.

A pirate needed all of that. A ship must be careened — hauled over on a beach to scrape the hull — every few months or it becomes unusably slow, and that takes a sheltered beach, time and hands. Plunder is worthless until someone buys it. Crews had to be recruited and fed.

What the hidden anchorage was actually for was the gap in between: somewhere to wait out a hunt, repair quietly, or sit on a shipping lane without being seen from it. Which is exactly what a rock island with a concealed inlet provides.

In the BlueBrixx range

Set 105266 is the Pirates Island Treasure Cave, the companion module. The separate Governors Island system is sets 105181, 105128, 105326 and 105327.

Specifications

Pieces: 966 · Designer: Marco P. · Series: BlueBrixx-Specials · Modular · No stickers · Instructions as free download