Frown upon or brilliant?

So just finished playing sea of thieves today. Had 3 friends I know irl that never played and wanted to try it out. I invited them to my captained galleon. I first had them hand in the treasure to each individual so they knew what treasure went where. On the second voyage I showed them the benefit of a captained ship with the sovereigns. On our last voyage we came across a brig I checked the map they had no reaper flag. I fired myself over and explained that my crew was new. (I mean they died to skeletons, ghost, no cosmetics and just cleared the tutorial type new). They said then this will be easy I killed one before dying. I then had us set sail for the bottom of the map and headed towards the red sea. (I found that sometimes if you manually drop loot over the ship in the red sea it will stay in the red sea.) As we neared I noticed none of them where paying attention to the map or their location. One was in crows nest another on the harpoon gun and the final on helm. I had my crew load the right side with chain ball. As we got near the edge we dropped anchor but stopped it before it fully rendered and then dropped at the last moment. I did a lot of tests and knew how long each ship had before the red sea spawned. As they passed I knocked down their main mast and fired into the hull and hit the wheel several times as well. By this point our sails was up and the anchor was half way raised. I had one of the crew members keep loading the cannons and the other two watch ladder. While I kept firing at the wheel. The red sea spawned on them and with only two crew members on board. Mast just finished being brought up and wheel damaged they sunk. Their treasure spawned near us. The third person got killed on the ladder as we all shot him with our flintlocks. Took their treasure and sold it. Didn't see the brig since. So my question was that completely dishonorable and shouldn't be allowed or was it me completely outclassing them since my crew was brand new to the game? (Also when I do fight I prefer the bottom of the map as that way no island is really an issue and rowboat tactics become far harder as their is no island to prepare behind).