Bashers
You can recruit a gang of mercenaries in any town or city. However, they aren't professional soldiers, don't have any sea going experience and aren't interested in extra training or becoming sailors. They are, however, prepared to take a share of the loot as payment for their services. However, you probably don't want to employ too many of them :)
- They are Warrior-1 characters who can act as crew for siege engines and can attack or defend vessels.
- They are easy to recruit
- They do not add to the crew required to sail the ship.
- They do add to the crew numbers when calculating loot shares.
These aren't the organised warriors of a mercenary company, the town guard or the army, and they don't have Profession(Soldier) as a skill - instead they might be casual 'bashers' for a Rogues Guild, ad hoc caravan guards, occasional militiamen, or something similar. They will be a bit of a disorganised rabble, but know how to fight and bash people. They come unequipped, apart from a single weapon (d6 damage)
Average stats are
AC-11: HP-15: Melee weapon +2 (d6, Crit d20x2)
Recruiting
Every town has a few low-level, poorly trained, unemployed bashers scraping a living as best they can. Pirate towns are no different in that respect, so it is just a case of finding one. So ask around town, spend 220gp getting contacts, and checking them out. Once you have found one, they will know where to find the others.