All the ships I ran into last night on LA were fine (was pirate hunting on LA until 2:30AM Eastern), both pirate and corrupted merchant.
The occupants typically showed little or no damage (and quickly regenerated) before reaching the first level of damage - even less than they did before the current events, and barely taking damage from there until scuttled. Except for the named captains, the crews dropped quickly on scuttling. At least the 12 to 15 cannon shots hadn't increased.
Since the coastal beacons are no longer bugged since last publish (I killed 2 last night with rewards, that didn't shoot at me after the orcs were dead - both would have been bugged before the publish), I wonder if we're back to the other half of whatever that issue was? From what I remember from earlier in the year, Every time they fixed the Beacon bug, some pirates became invulnerable - then when they fixed the pirates, the beacons became bugged again; and we went through that loop a couple times.