The pirates all live east of Jhelom, between there and the tip of the Cape of Heroes (the pointy bit on the end of the mainland). Blue NPC merchants can be seen out at sea generally, but the location isn't certain.
There's basically two ways to tackle pirate ships; it's actually cheaper and less confusing to do it solo, as the captain who is steering the ship will know where the cannons should be fired from... Put yourself between 4 cannons on a Gargoyle or Ork ship, or one on the Tokuno, locate a pirate, then sail just into cannon range (about 3/4 of the screen) fire and immediately sail out of range again. If you are really lucky, you can get behind a ship, and keep running immediately into it's rear; it'll turn 180 degrees occasionally but then not turn onto it's broadside, so the only cannon which can fire is the front one. Then using your prow cannon or the closest side one, as you drift left/right/forward and force it to keep moving on the vertical, plaster it with Grapeshot.
If you're REALLY lucky, like Nimauq and I were the other day, two pirate ships will run into each other and start fighting; just get behind them both, cripple each ship, and pick off the surviving crew!
If you want to do it involving all of your crew, it's simpler, but works out more expensive. Line all your crew up on one side of the ship, then just sail into it so all cannon on that side come to bear. Then just fire as fast as possible until the opposing ship shows the heavy damage state and cannot move.
The advantage of that is that you will always win a gun battle as the pirates fire their cannon randomly... and often thus pointlessly out to sea, whilst your focused fire will win out much quicker. The disadvantage is that you'll take a lot of damage, and ship repairs are hideously expensive...
If you do the above, you also need to deal with the opposing crew when you approach too; a solo player can wait until the ship is disabled and move into range again to then tackle them. You need to kill all the Orks aboard (don't worry about the red pirate leader now, they can take an incredible beating); they will however not switch target, so either bring a tamer or someone who can tank with you. As you approach for the first time to fight them, everyone hides, casts invisibility or hides under the pets... then when the battle starts, use Grapeshot, which damages the ship and injures the crew. I have not noticed any advantage as yet to using Cannonballs... it doesn't seem to damage the ship any more than Grapeshot does, curiously. (They will however do about 500hps more damage to Osireadon than Grapeshot does)
Once the Orks are dead, and the ship is crippled, move your ship to the stern of their vessel, out of the range of their cannon; this is vitally important, the cannon keep firing until the pirate leader himself is dead or captured, and otherwise you'll ALWAYS lose your ship to being scuttled. Staying pressed against their ship, move to the rear of theirs, near their cargo hold; you can still board from there don't worry.
Now then, the only way to make the trip worth bothering with is to start looting as soon as the Pirates are down to their leader. Take
everything you have room for. I leave the materials for my crafters, but cloth, fruit and veg, the lot can be sold to someone back at Sea Market. Those huge bails of wool? Worth about 7k in total, so sell them!
And what is the pirate doing whilst you nick his stuff? It'll take about 10 minutes for a Mare/Rune Beetle or Bane Dragon, or Greater Dragon to solo him down; he has insane HP regen, but very low damage output, and so pets can be left to slowly whittle him down whilst you loot without fear of needing to vet them more than once or twice. If you have no pets, one of the players keeps him occupied.
Capturing him is simple; below 8% hit points just use the rope on him... you can do this even whilst he's being damaged, or running about the ship in panic. Once it's started, you don't even have to be in range I think.
So now he's tied up and blabbering on your ship. Head to the nearest land mass and repair. If you've been scuttled, make emergency repairs; the message it gives you is the amount of sailing time you have before being scuttled again, so use it wisely. You want to be fully repaired before leaving the area in case you run into another pirate ship... being slow will mean you take even more expensive repairs. You'll just about break even at best (until you have an ork ship to sell or one of the new dye tubs, but when everyone has one, it'll not really be worth it) and anything which costs you money is to be avoided at all costs. I'm told that crafters can repair ships for less resources, but even then, you don't want to have to spend time moving 2000 wood to the ship (about what it takes for a full repair) for each trip.
Then, and this is the final and most important point;
everyone in the crew should be in the room when the quest is handed in. You should also be partied for the entire trip to be safe. At the moment, there appears to be a bug where the Party Leader doesn't get the random reward, or a share of the gold... just an unstackable single gold piece. Grrrrr. Not that many of you will be happy anyway... a single Light cannonball reward that really doesn't do a lot is quite common too (I've occasionally had the Heavy Flame/Ice and tried using them... they didn't do much either). But if you're lucky, some of you will have Ruined Ship Deeds to swap... you need all 8 to make the Ork ship.
And that's basically it! With a bit of practice you'll get the hang of it
But any more questions just feel free to ask...
