Actually they weren't valuable for sinking anything bigger than a sampan. Your normal 1500 ton freighter took between 150 and 200 shots to sink and no gun action during the war shot faster than one shot every 20 seconds. You do the math. It's just a completely unjustifiable risk to boat and crew to sit up there for that long plugging little holes in a freighter. That's why it didn't happen in the war.
The most common outcome of manning the deck gun was cleaning the gun crew's guts off the deck. As a matter of fact our first casualty of the war was a deck gun crewman that got splattered. Actually, pointing your finger at the enemy and saying "bang, bang" was slightly more efficient than using the deck gun.
Deck guns were, however, very good for drying laundry.
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