LIveships

Liveships aren't strictly magical creatures, but rather the creation of Robin Hobb.  She has a series of books about Liveships and their captains.  The story fallows two liveships, one named Paragon and Vivacia and a family that owns the Vivacia.  Later we find out that the liveships are in fact murdered cocooned baby dragons.  The dragons still have their memories from within the ship, but they are dormient.  It takes three lifetimes to make a ship.  Three deaths to make the ship turn into a liveship from an ordinary ship.  The liveships can talk through their figureheads and are considered members of their family.  Even Paragon that goes insane and drowns his family unitientionally.  He then gets the memories of a twelve year old boy and becomes half a child and half a man.  His family believes him to be strange, an odd person at first then the first man from his family sails him.  He ultimately meets with disastor.   The second man to sail him finds the pirate Isles and has a son before he ultimately gets captured by a pirate before dying.  Paragon winds up drowning the pirate crew and sailing back to Bingtown harbor.   He's tied up for thirty years, beached onshore before he goes on an adventure to rescue Vivacia who has been captured by pirates.