Ideas for players taking over a pirates ship?

[hanez]

Hi my campaign is transitioning into skull and shackles from another adventure. When we last left the adventure, the players were stranded on an island, where they lit a signal fire and a ship is coming to "Rescue them". I was thinking about using this as a transition to get their on boat.

Im thinking the ship is a cheliax ship, and they are coming to take the players prisoner. The players job is to overcome the ship. They are level 4, and one of our players is a necromancer who dreams of being a piratee with undead sailors. This would lead into ap book 2, with the players going to rickety squibbs.

So the question is how do I make this believable? I want to stay away from the prisoner/mutiny storyline. Would it be cheesey if it was relatively easy to take over the ship? How would you modify the story to be more interesting and believable?

[Trinite]

Maybe since it's a Chelish ship, most of the crew are slaves and only the officers would oppose the PCs. The slave crew would be happy gain their freedom and turn to piracy. The PCs would basically only have to win one fight against the officers, and then the ship would be theirs.

Or, for the undead angle: the ship caries a plague that has already killed most of the crew when they take the PCs aboard. There are undead crewmen locked in the hold, and maybe some other monsters here and there infesting things. The officers could still be evil opponents, or maybe all the officers are already dead and the remaining crew needs someone new in charge.