Noticing they were starting to get overwhelmed, the party decided to retreat... by stealing the pirate ship. Which sent the campaign in a completely new and fun direction and allowed them to wear pirate costumes on-stage for the next episode.

It was also mostly Tavis's doing that locked them in that direction of "escape", but also made sense as Fjord (his character) had a whole sailor background. It ended leading directly into Fjord's individual story arch.

I believe Matt said later during a Talks Machina or something that he did not think of that option when we was setting up the fight before stream, but that it's exactly the kind of crazy player decision that he loves.

I just love the: oh, we need to retreat. I know! Let's steel the pirate ship.

My players did something similar in one of our campaigns. Though in their case the ship they were already on was attacked by pirate and I'd REALLY underestimated the difficulty. My players slaughtered the pirates and decided to take their ship instead of just ride on someone else's. The core plot of that campaign was really location agnostic, so I didn't mind at all.