I've done pirates with just 2 people (and I've heard of people that solo, but not personally seen it).
Here's how my two-player fights went:
1. Make sure the pirate is WELL away from others; too often, especially between Jhelom and Valor Island, you can have your fight jumped by other pirates (not pretty).
2. Both players need to bring mages with 120 magery & 120 eval (or as close as you can get). Inscription is a plus, but not mandatory. Equipment for each should include a quiver of infinity, a SC mage weapon (preferably with leeches) that uses the ammo you've stuck in the quiver, and jewelry that keeps your LMC/LRC intact, while offsetting the magery loss from the weapon. Also, Scrapper's compendiums or other DI books (such as repond slayer). Equip the books first.
3. Cast a Water ele and an air ele apiece (telling them to guard), then move in on the target, concentrate chain lightnings on the orc crew, until they all drop, leaving just the captain.
4. Switch to the mage weapons, and start manning the ship's cannon. Remember to crossheal and replace the eles as they fall. The reason for the choice of summons is that you get two casting summons per caster that way, and that the water ele will occasionally jump ship and attack the other ship from close range. You can also invis, and get the captain to switch target from you to the elemental, so that you have a couple of eles tanking the arrows for you.
Typically, 1 person can handle 2 cannons at a time easily enough (especially if you set an EC macro or 2 to do the work, in which case you might be able to set 2-3 macros and handle all 3 on the side of an orc or garg ship).
The other crewman gives ship commands (DO NOT use the HS-introduced movement system - stay with movement commands given vocally, via UO Rudder, or having the EC set up to emulate UO Rudder using the built-in command buttons for creating macros & hot buttons for ship movement), loading the 3rd (or 4th, if an orc ship with a bow weapon, or using a whale).
The reason for using the bows is that, if standing still working to reload the cannon, it becomes difficult to cast spells on the captain. The loading is effectively treated as already spellcasting. However, all the Bows care about is "time since last fired" for swing speed, and if you've moved (which you've not, standing between the two cannon). As a result, as the load process is running, you'll automatically be cranking off a few arrows/bolts between reload steps (and during recovery from the cannon fire).
5. When you have his ship scuttled, cross over and cast any NON-casting summons of your choice to do the main work, and either switch back to spells, or continue dumping arrows. When he gets close to death, if you are trying for a capture, reduce the number of summons, with only the mate attacking (and getting ready to mass dispel the summons), while the ship captain goes for the capture. You want non-casters like EVs or Earth eles for this step, as the others will continue to lob spells back across to YOUR ship, when the guy gets chained to your post.
Remember to dispel the summons before crossing back.
6. At this point it's a matter of looting the target (grabbing a pack animal optional here, unless you're ferrying stuff directly to shore), then limping to the nearest land to repair your ship. On completion of repairs, head back to the quest giver.
Options:
Note that a tamer (with high magery) and a Mage can pretty much do this even faster, provided the pet casts and stays in range (a better tank for the party), and that if the tamer doesn't have eval, they end up doing the majority of the cannon work (letting the pure mage or multi-caster hybrid) go full-on spellcastin). A necro-mage doesn't have to result to mage weapons, unless they want to use a mana leech or mana drain bow (the latter craftable with Reforging). Even without specials, a Chiv mage with GM Tactics or Anatomy can also put a serious hurt on the captain by casting EoO and other buffs in addition to their summons.
