I was looking at a wonderful old print of the battle of Tamai earlier, which shows Highlanders and sailors from the Naval Brigade in close combat with Beja around a Gatling gun. One of the tars struck me as great fodder for a conversion if you felt like doing it. He appears to be a petty officer (roughly equivalent to a sergeant I think, but his rank insignia is quite indistinct, so he may something else - but he is almost certainly what in the Army you would call an NCO) and Instead of wearing his regulation headgear he has a very piratical bandana on his head, and he has a Navy cutlass bayonet between his teeth! He may as well have a speech bubble saying "Arrrrrr! I'm a pirate!"
I imagine there is quite a bit of artistic licence going on there, but it might be fun to depict such a fellow. Maybe not with the blade between his teeth, that might be tricky, but brandishing it ready to go and in his buccaneer fancy dress hat might be cool. Just a thought.