PIRATE COVE Kirk Willett scanned the crowd below, then issued his command. “Two minutes,” he told the gun crew. “Then fire at will.” The cannoneers on the foredeck readied their weapon. The projectiles -- socks, T-shirts and small rubber footballs -- were ready on the deck. Willett, or Capt. Kirk as he prefers not to be called, had been preparing for this battle all week. But now, with the attack ready to begin, he prayed the million dollar pirate ship beneath his feet would perform as expected. “To be on the safe side, maybe you should turn up the juice,” a reporter suggested. “We set the cannons at the 100 decibel level,” explained Andrew Nicholls, who as the resident pyrotechnics expert was the pirate ship's Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott to Willett's James T. Kirk. “If we turned them up all the way, we would be blowing fans out of their seats.” Nicholls, a special effects consultant from Orlando, spent weeks rigging the ship's smoke and concussion cannons, which The Brothers Glazer hope will strike fear into the hearts of all those NFC Central teams unlucky enough to cross its path. “Of course, we had to be careful,” Nicholls said. “I create hazards for a living. The trick is to do it safely.” At exactly 3:45 pm, Willett received a call on a cell phone, then lifted his hand and signalled for the fusillade to begin. A cacophony of cannons cracked out as cheap shirts and white socks whistled through the air toward unsuspecting fans in the end zone. Willett and Nicholls smiled. Their mission was accomplished, and there were no casualties. “It is really pretty amazing that we were able have this thing ready in time,” said Kirk Kennedy of The Nassal Company. “We did eight months of work in 67 days.” The 103-foot ship, designed to look like a Spanish galleon, is not very seaworthy. With 19 tons of concrete and steel in her hull, she'll be here long after the Glazers and Raymond James Stadium are gone. “It would probably make a much better anchor than a boat,” pyrotechnist Nicholls said. “If a hurricane came through here tomorrow, this might be the only thing left standing.” Most of the fans who wandered through the model pirate village in the north end zone said the yet-to-be-named ship would help put Tampa on the map. “I think it is great ... it looks good,” said Richard Montauda of Dunedin. “But I don't know about those cannons. People are killing each other for those T-shirts down in the end zone.” Lori Walton, a former Tampa resident who flew in from California for the game, said the pirate deck will be a great place for fans to socialise. “It is awesome, just look at it,” she said. “We needed something like this.” Patrick Chartrand, an auto salesman from Fort Myers, disagreed. “This is a football stadium, not Disney Land,” said the ex-Marine. “I think the fans probably would have liked to have some more seats instead of a pirate ship shooting cheap T-shirts.” Mike Gannon, Brian Dooley and Andrew McGee said they feel like they have found a new home in Buccaneer Cove. The three dress as pirates for all the home games. “I think they should have made the whole stadium into one big pirate ship,” Gannon said. “Why stop here?” In fact, Gannon thinks the Bucs should play up the whole murdering, cut-throat, high-seas looter thing just a little bit more. “Black helmets with a skull and cross bone, and black jerseys, simple and ugly like Penn State or The Longest Yard,” he said. “But I give them credit. At least they got rid of the old ones ... an orange pirate with a feather in his hat winking at you just didn't look too intimidating.”