The dark and high elf navy are the best around right but I have a question for you. How do they fight? Why are they the best around?

I know how the empire fights it's battles, via carracks and broadsides. What do the elves do? Do they operate like galleys, ramming enemy ships and boarding roman style, outmanouvering then capturing close quarters with superior weapon skill? Do they fire ballistae or cannon? Do they try and blast enemy ships out of the water? I know the dark elves have all types of nasties that follow their black arcs but what about the regular old corsairs? Just how effective would backward technology light ships be against an 80 gun carrack (I say carrack because I have no idea what Warhammer calls them)

They would have to be pretty impressive ballista to pierce the hull of a 15th century carrack or galleon considering half the time cannonballs fail to do so. I am interested on your thoughts, both opinions and facts.

You will find all this information in the old Man'O'War board game. If I have some time I will look for it and scan its contents. All I can remember is that elves had no cannons, they use big ballistas. Their ships where fast and use the tecnic of ramming their enemies, and finally, the strongest point, they have high elf mages in their ships.

As Yepes has said search for the old rulebook from Man o'War. Try some of these sides like scribd or Issu or how they are named.

Or look ath the Lexicanum Wiki entry:

whfb.lexicanum.com/wiki/High_Elf_Navy

High Elf ships are quite flimsy but have superior range with their small Hawkships and can make 180° turns in one turn with their ship. When I was younger my brother played with his High Elf fleet and I with my dwarven fleet. We had made Legoships at that time. So my dwarven fleet was having a real difficulty to reach the enemy ships with my turret guns. Also the biggest High Elf Ship has some Ithilmar Ramming bows which realy can slice through a ship in one go. Some of my smaler Monitors faced that doom.

Also in the Rulebook you will find the Imperial Ships which are more like Cannon Galleys used by Venice and Italy in the mediteranian sea around the middle ages. The Ships like Carracks and Fregattes as well as Galeons are used by the Bretonians. They are very Broadside oriented.

In Emirikols Scenario List is an adventure which plays on an Imperial Wolfship. You might try that one. Also I was thinking of making a scenario where my dwarven group take a small dwarven Steam Gunboat up into the Wasteland around Marienburg to "end the command" of some Reikland Captain who has gone rogue and has started some private war with the devils of the swamps.

Ships master: "You know that the place you wanna go is out of the empire?"

PC: "I have my orders and you will do what I tell you."

This is also fantasy settings, and especially High Elves control powerful magics. One could imagine that their ships could be magically powered, which could help both speed and agility. Even durability. Maybe their weaponry could be powered also? I think it was in the WFRP1 Marienburg sourcebook that had some ideas that High Elves use elemental-magic / elmentals to speed up their ships…

Magic-users can be powerful assets in the sea-combat - Just think about Bright Wizard. In the Warhammer settings imperial wizards are probably very rare in the human ships. But among the High Elves this could be very different - And again - They use very powerful High Magic.

Not sure how many folks on the FFG forums have read Robert V.S. Riddick's The Voyage of the Chathrand books…but there's some nice inspiration for fantasy style naval ships/battles. There's an element that I think might work with High Elves naval endeavors and that deals with the ship itself having some elements of a consciousness to it. Dark Elves could have imprisoned daemons trapped into the very workings of the ship. As a RW mariner the tendency to call our ship "she" and talk about "her" as an actual entity is very ingrained aspect of mariner culture. High Elves might utilize "elemental" forces so that the sea itself works with the ship…I need to get the ManO'War book as well to see GW's take on it. But, the OW definitely feels ripe for some High Seas scenarios…I'm sure some wonderfully creative FFG staffer currently has sketches/models/cards in the works for just this very type of campaign.