I was excited to get yesterday's mail as I finally got my Sir Henry Morgan card from the 1888 N19 Pirates of the Spanish Main set back from grading.
Long before Captain Morgan became a familiar name on a rum bottle, Allen & Ginter put the man behind the name on a cigarette card, which depicts his capture of Panama in 1671. A Welsh buccaneer operating under commission from Jamaica’s English governor, Morgan made his reputation through brutal raids on Spanish settlements. He was later knighted and became lieutenant governor of Jamaica - a remarkable turn from raider to colonial official.
When Seagram launched Captain Morgan rum in 1944 it borrowed the name of the famous buccaneer with deep ties to Jamaica, where the rum was produced. That combination seems a natural fit for the branding, though the real Morgan’s history was considerably darker than his cheerful bottle-label persona.
Allen & Ginter however, had tapped into that pirate legend roughly 56 years earlier. The N19 set featured 50 cigarette cards, pairing colorful portraits and action scenes with individual biographies on the backs. That’s what draws me to this set: the artwork, the history, and the way a small piece of cardboard connects the actual man, his legend, and the marketing that followed.
This Captain Morgan has a place in my card collection instead of my liquor cabinet, with plenty more N19 pirates for me still to chase.
