> See, the hijackers can't actually sail the ship. So they can't kill the crew, or at least can't kill very many of them.

Sailing the ship safely takes some skill.

Sailing the ship at all takes about 5 minutes of watching youtube worth of learning.

And they can certainly sink the ship as a warning to the next ship. Indeed attacks in the area have a history of sinking ships: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houthi_attacks_on_commercial_v...