Castles and Pirates in Newfoundland!

Continuing our studies of Canada, I thought it would be fun to work with lego today since I had found a neat castle/pirate/water/land thingey on sale after Christmas.  :)   I wanted to make it just needed to find a way to tie it all together.   So I did some research this morning... did Newfoundland have castles?    Did they ever have pirates?
THEY DID!!!   WOOT WOOT!!!   Lego fun here we come!!!

BUT first the learning.
Newfoundland has had a few pirates but the best known of them is Peter Easton.   Depending on the Youtube video you want he's in the top 15 of the worst pirates.

Peter Easton was a man who started out his life working a commission for the Queen of England.  His job... Take three battle ships and patrol the coast of the world.   Easy enough, did his job.  WHILE he was doing this job a new king (James I) came into power.   The war with Spain ended, England, with no battles to fight, decreased it's military might leaving Peter Easton and his men stranded.  No pay, no way home.   What to do, what to do?

AH HA!!!   Piracy!   Therein lies the answer.   And he was awfully good at it to, for within seven years he was known as the "Notorious  Pirate".  In 1610 he was the wealthiest, most feared pirate in the Western Hemisphere.    5,000 men plus 40 ships. 

He fortified Harbour Grace Bay and there is still an Island named after him.

click image to go to source tide maps

He even took the King's emissary hostage trying to convince him to become a pirate.  But Whiteboure refused, offering to petition King James for a pardon for the pirate, in order to be released.  The pardon came, but Easton never received it, even though he waited two years for it to come.    Growing tired of waiting he set off to fight for the King of Algiers, fighting a profitable war against Spain.

He eventually retired, married and settled down.  He was known in the end as the Marquis of Savoy. 

Since we were learning about pirates we played a pirate game called Black Spot.  At least some people think it was started by the pirates.    It's as logic/patterning game where your goal is to get the other person to take the dark stone.   Rules are simple.  Alternate who starts.   One dark stone, 10 light stones.   You can can 1, 2 or 3 stones  away at a time.   My 10 year old quickly figured out the trick to winning this game.

So Peter Easton has fortified Harbour Grace Bay and Ferryland.   Building himself a beautiful home and protected area.  

This led us into the story of the Castle built ... well. at what is now often called Castle Hill.   :)   Built on a site now call Placentia, Castle Hill is a walk back in time.  King Henry XIV wanted to establish a strong base for New France, so he built a Castle hill to be a base of operations.   

Though it gradually lost influence against St. John's, particularly once the British were able to successfully blockade and defeat it, this place was the base of operations for d’Iberville and his devastating attacks against the English Settlements.

As we looked for castles on youtube my son was delighted to find this minecraft video that use Easton's name in it.   He kept saying "well done but mom, they must be using a different tone/skin pack.  I bet I could do this if I worked hard at in creative mode".

All the learning "done" we then set to build our pirate home and castle (though it's really NOT a castle we just pretended).  :)    but that's what Lego is for right?   We also aware that they wouldn't have had power boats at the time or automatic weapons.

After we finished our build we had fun using the different characters names that we learned about today.  The British and the French fighting, Easton doing his raids, D'iberville and his attacks on the English.  It was all quite exciting.  :)

Sources:
Castle Hill.
Pirates of Canada.
The Pirate King.
Tide Forecast.
Castle Hill National Historic Site.