So I just sent out an exploration and then realised stupidly that I was still short some pirates from my last. I already had these recruiting so in the island map I clicked on my ship and cancelled the exploration, which is something I've done before from the island map with no problems. This time it cancelled the exploration and had 0 pirates when originally it had around 25 while I recruited the other 10. Can't find then anywhere they just vanished. The exploration had been set less than a minute before I cancelled.
If you have a pirate icon above the ship, that means they are still on board. The blue bar on the left will say 0 because that number refers to how many pirates are in the tavern (this can be a different number if you have recruited more pirates whilst the others are away on a voyage). Tapping the pirate icon above the pirate ship will return the crew on the ship to the tavern, however if there is no space there because you have recruited more pirates, you will lose them.
It isn't any of that, all I was recruiting before I sent out was what I lost on my previous exploration. So when I cancelled the exploration only about 3 had been recruited which obviously I had more than enough space for. But my pirates didn't return in any way and left me with just the 3 in my tavern, none on the ship any more.
