hmmm... could it be an OS issue? All of the above examples work for me on a Linux box. Exactly what failure are you seeing? My test code:

use WWW::Mechanize;
use HTML::TableExtract;
$url = "http://www.sailwx.info/shiptrack/cruiseships.phtml";
my $input;
my $m = WWW::Mechanize->new();
   $m->get($url);
   $input = $m->content;
my $te;
# $te = HTML::TableExtract->new( attribs => { border => 1 } ); # works
# $te = HTML::TableExtract->new(headers => ['Ship', 'position']); # wo
+rks
# $te = HTML::TableExtract->new(headers => [qw(Ship position)]); # wor
+ks
$te = new HTML::TableExtract ( headers => [qw(Ship position)] ); # wor
+ks

$te->parse($input);
foreach my $row ($te->rows) {
  print Dumper($row); use Data::Dumper;
}
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