WHAT feature was removed? "Talk with captain" wasn't removed, nor was the surrender mod.
The usual surrendered captain dialog is
PROGRAM\DIALOGS\Cabinfight_dialog.c .
As for the fight with Silehard's ship being hard, what ship do you have yourself?
Fighting a Manowar, you'll be needing a pretty big ship yourself.
The Development Resources contain some mods that will be added to the Alpha's at some point.
For now, one mod has been added, being the Different Flags Mod.
This has had several fixes included since then. You can install Build 14 Alpha 9.5 + Development Resources
if you want, but it won't give you a very stable game version.
Still worth it if you install on a COPY of your stable game version and want to see what we have in the works.
You can find the file here: http://www.pyratesahoy.com/build/Build%2014%20Alpha%2010%20WIP/development_resources.exe
Can anyone confirm that Black Pearl problem?