I played for probably close to an hour. There's a lot of fun here. I can't say I figured out how to "trade", but I got very good at mowing down ships and selling all their stuff. I got to a Snow ship and most of the way to the one after that. I stopped playing because it seemed like I was only fighting bots. Hard to tell, but I ended up in a route between Cancun and some other port with just a line of ships all close together that wouldn't shoot each other and only shot at me. Not sure if I fought any other real players.
That said, the mechanics were pretty fun. Getting a whole bunch of cannons definitely felt great when you see that swarm of cannon balls fire and one-shot smaller ships. I'd have loved a little more clarity on how to properly trade or gather resources (not sure if I should have just been buying at ports to make profit elsewhere, or if there is some other way to get resources. Overall, a lot of fun and quite the game to make in one month. Well done.