So basically the (inferior?) imperial version of Black Seas Baracuda?

I don't think one has aged well. It's pretty empty and the captain's cabin is equally sparse. The half-assed rigging is almost an insult. As revolutionary as Pirates was at the time, I do feel like that after pouring their heart and souls into the Black Seas Barracuda, the designers treated the Caribbean Clipper as an afterthought. The Imperial Flagship in 1992 was a huge improvement, but the precedent had already been set: the real gold of the theme was in the biggest ships, like the aforementioned Barracuda and the Skull Eye Schooner. Everything else was just cannon fodder!

It survived the 20 years of fun with my 7 older siblings and me before retiring with my older brother who, among the siblings, is the biggest fan of the classic pirate theme.

Rebuilt this one recently from my childhood bricks. Missing a few pieces in the right color but still looks good. Even ok next to the black pearl.

I've always thought the imperial ships should be bigger than the pirate ships. But later on I realized that Lego did the right thing, pirates were always more fun to play with, hence the bigger and more colorful ships. Also, you need some budget sets, besides the larger and more expensive sets, so that more people can reach the somewhat similar experience.

got this one fairly recently, I do think its a classic

Oh, the pain of not having this boat!!!

The peak of my childhood. Took me more that 20 years to get the Barracuda as well. Finally I can do some real naval battles!

@Zordboy you are not alone. :)

I always was sorry not to get any of the pirates sets. Especially the boats.

I remember staring at the catalogues containing this set. I obviously wanted any of the bigger boats, but I knew that this smaller one was much more likely to happen.

It never did happen though, but the fond memories of holding the Lego catalogue and dreaming of ship combat remain. :) Nostalgia is one hell of a drug.

[insert I should buy a boat meme]

I remember looking at all the big Pirates sets in stores -I got Eldorado Fortress but no ships as a kid - and the sets all had amazingly detailed back stories on the inner flap. Good times...

I still have childhood photos of my brother unwrapping his gift to reveal this set. Sadly this ship was dismantled long ago due to lack of space and many parts were lost to time. I might rebuild it one day with what's left of it, if I can make room in my house. I miss Lego sets like this.

The last LEGO set I was ever given, Xmas '89. 26 years until I bought my next one. Still have this in pieces, and VERY dusty.

Great set and great theme.

This one and Barracuda are some of the few sets from my childhood that my 5 and 7 year old actually play with today built per original design. They don't like the other sets from my youth and would rather build their own designs with the pieces. That just shows how timeless these ships are.

This was my first pirate set! It still looks magnificent with all the other ships I have along side it.

I remember using this in a school diorama project for my 4th grade state convention.

Bring pirates back, arrrr!

@Lego Lord Mayorca at first i disagreed, but by the end of your comment, I see your point. I think even a small rear sail (esp. since you have the rigging already) would have added a lot to the model, aesthetically, giving it at leas the appearance of more substance than it perhaps had.

I had this set - this and Forbidden Island were my first (and for a long time, only) pirates sets. I absolutely loved them growing up, and remade them constantly. I always wished for the Barracuda, and I think a part of it was that it's obvious even to a child that the two ships are in entirely different leagues. I eventually found the baraccuda on ebay years later (and now, Eldorado Fortress as well!) but i dunno, I still feel a lot of nostalgia for this set, even if it's objectively not aging as well (even Forbidden Island has aged better I think).

I've never been able to tell from the pictures of these ships... is the boat hull built out of bricks, or is it one big specialised piece?

Pirates was before my time (by just two or three years), but I always love seeing how nostalgic everyone gets for it. A true Lego classic theme, I guess ^^

I hope LEGO comes back with this theme soon.

To those asking for Pirates to come back, I think the problem there is they'd want it branded. I think in their heads, if they were going to make Pirates, it'd have to be Pirates of the Caribbean. Not only was that theme not a huge hit, but the licensing would drive up the costs. I hope I'm wrong, but it seems whenever they can license, they do license.

One of my first large sets. I spent all day at the dining room table building, then some fantastic memories playing with it!

This one along with Eldorado Fortress, Forbidden Island and Black Seas Barracuda were my favorite 4 sets as a child. I still have them with mint condition packaging. I break them out every now and then. They just don't make them like they used to.

Fantastic sets.

@Lego Lord Mayorca: I suspect that this set was as unimpressive as it was not because it was an "afterthought" but because the designers wanted a ship at a lower price point than the $110 price of the Barracuda, and the cost of all the new elements for the hull, masts, rigging, etc. ate up a lot more of the budget for a set at such a low price point.

I suspect this is also part of why more recent themes HAVEN'T had smaller ships that use the same hull pieces as the bigger pirate ships… though of course, the new pirate ship hull pieces are also somewhat more affordable than these classic ones were thanks to merely being large molds and not pre-assembled ones!

@ra226: I don't think that's it, necessarily. After all, they've had plenty of success with non-licensed themes in recent years, albeit not necessarily the same ones that were their bread and butter back in the 80s and 90s. For example, Ninjago has long outlived the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles theme, even though they overlapped and belong to a fairly similar genre. And it's not as though there are no popular kids' fantasy adventure series similar to LEGO Elves that LEGO could have sought a license for if they weren't interested in creating their own IP in that genre.

With Pirates, though, I think it's never been quite as much of a perennial hit as a lot of the other themes it overlapped with. After all, not only did it launch a solid decade after the Town, Space, and Castle themes it's often grouped with, it also entered its first major hiatus two to three years before the rest of them, returned from that hiatus two to four years after the rest of them, and had the shortest-lived comeback of all four.

In fact, the Pirates theme's original run (1989 through 1997) was shorter than the Bionicle theme's original run (2001 through 2010). LEGO Ninjago is likewise in the midst of its ninth year with no signs of stopping.

Perhaps for that reason, LEGO seems to treat Pirates less like their other classic themes, which have been re-imagined every two or three years (with an exception for the Space theme in years that would overlap with an ongoing Star Wars movie trilogy), and more like some of their less frequently recurring theme categories, the sort that have had successful runs at times but never been considered evergreen:
• Secret agent themes (Alpha Team, Agents, Ultra Agents)
• Underwater themes (Aquazone, Aqua Raiders, Atlantis)
• Underground themes (Rock Raiders and Power Miners)
• Dinosaur themes (Dinosaurs, Dino Attack, and Dino)
• Paranormal themes (Studios Monsters, Monster Fighters, Hidden Side)

Compared to some of those, the five-year gap between the latest two incarnations of LEGO Pirates, or the four-year (and still ongoing) hiatus since that most recent incarnation, doesn't seem so bad at all! After all, there were a good nine years between the LEGO Studios Monsters sets and LEGO Monster Fighters, and then six years between Monster Fighters and Hidden Side.

And let's not neglect the potential for a once short-lived and forgettable brand to be re-imagined as a major in-house hit after seemingly being abandoned. When LEGO Ninjago first came out, it had been an entire decade since the last of the previous Ninja sets!

I absolutely loved Lego as a Kid and when I had my son, so I could live through my passion for Lego he received Lego for his Birthday and Christmas every year, so tried to buy him nice sets.
This was one of them, I knew he would love it and I managed to save up to purchase for him. He still loves this set and recently I have kept up the tradition and purchased for his son who's only (5 years old) The Brick Bounty 70413.
Lego has played a big part in our family, I collect, my son collects and now my grandson and grand daughter also do.
Brickset has also been an invaluable tool for us, so I can keep taps on what we all have. I keep all our collections on there, so I know what we do and don't have.