1. I'm not getting it. I loaded up with grape and chain, hit the sails enough so he's slower than I am, then clear the deck with grape, and finish by boarding.

The post-battle screen shows one ship captured. Where is it? Its not in my fleet, and I don't see it in the nearest port, either. At the very least, it would be nice to loot, so I can at least afford to repair my ships.

2. Accuracy is pretty poor. After a dozen odd battles, I'm still missing way too much, eyeballing it, roughly half as good as generic pirates on a sloop. Do I just need to keep plugging away at it? I assume I just set a course and let the captain fire at will, though I change the type of shot, right?

I don't know why I wasn't getting the screen for looting or adding to my convoy, but when I started a new game, there it was after every battle. Maybe I had some setting wrong or something.

I wasn't using the space. Maybe I should. All I was doing was when I was in a position where I wanted to take the shot, I clicked on "Attack", then immediately unclicked it after the captain fired so I could maneuver for the next shot.

I have mixed opinions about keeping the sloops. They are nice for running short trade routes, and when they get taken, I don't lose much cargo, but I smack up against that 10 convoy limit pretty fast. Do you find its about as good to sell them and not bother with trying to manage a bunch of wimpy coasters?

Way back when I ended up printing pages 34-41 to have a quick guide for businesses you can build and the ships you can "acquire".

When looking at these ships, I tended to concentrate on speed first since that affects both how quickly you can get your goods from one port to another and also how fast they move around in a battle. If I could pick up a slow ship I'd usually do so just to sell it off at the next port-of-call; this is at the point where I have just a single convoy going. So keeping this in mind, at the beginning and early-middle of the game I don't keep those slow Flute-ships in my main convoy but will instead place them in a convoy dedicated to pre-set trade routes (and with a captain who has a good starting trader level). Ditto caravels. Since those trade route convoys generally take care of themselves I'm not really concerned with how fast they go.

One nice thing about sloops, besides being cheap, is that they can be the sacrificial lambs when your trade-dedicated convoys get attacked. Order your slower traders to beat feet while a couple sloops lure the enemy in the other direction. Doesn't always work out that way but sloops are cheap to operate and they carry a decent amount of stuff, so they fit fairly well in your early-game trade groups.

Now the barque is a nice all-arounder since it has speed, armament, decent crew capacity, and fair load space. Later on the Trading Flute-ship is good do-it-all vessel, too. But eventually you'll find yourself loaded up with 10 galleons / liners / military frigates in a convoy or two, which you'll need for the toughest of the pirate bounty missions.

Edit: Oh yeah - if you keep bumping up against the 10-ship limit then it's probably time to hire another captain for a second convoy and get an automated trade route started. This thread will help you get that going: http://www.gog.com/en/forum/port_royale_series/any_tips_on_setting_up_trade_routes