Pirates of the Carribean, Return of the Tall Ships Options

[Cheops]

Was thinking while reading a Patrick O'Brian book that pirates in the Carib League would probably do pretty well with tall ships. There is a boom of magic in most Carib states, and a full blown houngan war, and a bust on heavy industry. This would make modern, metal ships very expensive. So expensive that magically-enhanced wooden ships may suddenly become competitive.

The object resistance of the components of a tall ship wouldn't be above 2 (worked wood, hemp, and cloth) or at most 3 (for cannons, ring bolts, other metal components). Use a steel bottom instead of the traditional copper. You could prepare the ship as a vessel and put a spirit in it. Or if that was too expensive you could inhabit specific components (air spirit in the sails, guardian spirit in the cannons, water spirit in the hull). Since the mage can easily help make the ship the threshold for enchanting stays low so anchoring can be done. Really ambitious mages could even bottom it with orichalcum!

And to take it one step further, you could make it the Black Pearl by using zombies and corpse cadavers to run the ship. You'd only need humans for the officers and warrant officers.

As I said 'though since magic should be pretty cheap and heavy, modern industry expensive, seeing something like this in a campaign should be believable.