Broadsides

[Silly Princess]

Yes, you just have to work on building your cannon skills. A good way to do that is park your ship outside of a busy port; launch ship, go directly to cannons (do not sail first) and blast away at whatever gets close until you can sink them.

I do this on all my characters to build cannon points. There's a chance they'll fight back and sink you, but it's rare while doing it this way from my exp.