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I’m not sure what the ‘Pirate ship’ is supposed to be. As a single-masted vessel, it’s hardly representative of typical Age of Sail ocean-going ships. And if it’s meant to be a pirate craft, it should be fast and handy, right? But the listed speed is incredibly slow. An Acceleration of 0.03 is inferior even to the Rowboat, let alone any other vessel. Even the paddling Elven riverboat is faster at an Acceleration of 0.05. The top speed at just over five knots is unimpressive as well, especially when one keeps in mind that a cheap medieval roundship like the one GURPS calls a ‘Cog’ can make 7 knots. One wonders how this supposed pirate vessel is going to catch anyone that doesn’t explicitly want to be boarded and captured.
As for the ‘typical’ 16th century Spanish Armada Galleon, I’m stunned. More than twelve knots? I know that the popular image of ponderous Spanish ships yipped at by light English terriers is somewhat inaccurate, but the fact remains that while galleons undoubtedly were very seaworthy and represented a tremendous advantage over the carrack or nao, they weren’t built for speed. They made 8 knots, typically, and the fastest galleons weren’t anywhere near as large as the one presented here. In fact, a typical galleon was smaller with a tonnage of 400-500 tons and still not nearly so fast.
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When I did my TL analysis, I noticed this myself. A TL 4 "Pirate ship" is actually SLOWER than a TL 3 Crusader Ship, and looking at the two statlines, I can't think of many reasons to make the jump to the "Pirate Ship." I would expect Pirate Ships would be faster than their prey, as you can't possibly pounce on treasure ships if they simply lower all their sails and outrun you.
I'm betting its errata, and there's some numbers switched between the Galleon and the Pirate ship