Wow, it was hard enough getting through the lame, vaque quests as Peter Blood.

Anyhoo, going into combat I can't shoot. Nothing works. Went through forum here, there, everywhere.
Tried the proposed fixes and nothing works.

Too bad. I played Sea Dogs 1 and 2 (PoC that is) and those were great, worked fine.

You tried the Q key? You have musket balls in your inventory?

MK

nooo, I was pressing the W key. what do you think genius? lol.

Q to fire ur pistol, Spacebar or left click to fire ship cannons, once theyve fired they need time to reload indicated by the green bars in the top right hand corner of ur screen, u also need to be in range of the ship ur firing on and need to have ur cannons and camera pointing towards the target, any other issues could be key binding related so check ur key bindings

Oh thanks. It was actually a game bug. I restarted a new game and it worked.
Reload time is looong. Need more crew heheheh!

Game is pretty buggy but at least it works now (most of the time) ;)