I found the following site quite helpful when I organised my son's birthday earlier this year as he had a pirate theme. users.tinyworld.co.uk/giggles. If I remember rightly it has the rules for "Ship Shore" on it, which keeps kids going for a while, and there is no prize element to it either (unless you want there to be). If any of your kids go to cubs, brownies or similar, they may already know it. Click on Pirate Party games down the left hand side, then click on the beckoning skeleton for the rules.