SH3 is in a difficult area between "game" and "simulation". The deck guns are on the "game" side... and are jolly good fun.
I believe the deck gun was not really capable of directly sinking anything other than the smallest merchants. The accuracy was too low and the shells were too small to make a sizeable hole at the waterline. I have read several accounts of small WW2 warships trying to finish off crippled ships with gunfire and failing miserably.
The main idea was to get the ship to stop under prize rules, scare the crew into abandoning ship or set the ship on fire (which would probably eventually sink it). These things are not well represented in the game.
Early war the 20mm flak on the type II could be useable in intimidating unarmed lone merchants. I think this is a thing in "uboat", but I'm not sure if it actually happened in real life!
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