I think it is worth mentioning that although we only used a box in the animation any object can be made to act the same.
I made a seaplane a while ago and included in some of my very early Stentec sceneries. Got it to float in the Stentec simulators OK on 2 the floats.
Just tried it now as an animation the same way as the box tutorial, as keep all the blend files. Animations don't have to be small as animated it over say 300 metres taking off and looping the loop in a circular path (looping the loop was accidental

).
Don't know if small movements of a sailing ship say in port between 2 quays could also be done as a animation for background movements.
However I don't know even if Blender would still work for SS5, as detailed previously, but at least you know how animation can/could be used.
The other methods are the animation can be linked to a path and follow the twists and turns.
With people. horses, etc "bones" are linked to the seperate mesh.
Stentec mentioned a long time ago, years ago now I think, that they were making an animated old style windmill....that would be interesting to try and get working in Blender.

, but would need a lot of experimenting to try and get it to work.
Whether any of my animation tutorial are relevant to SS5, some may be, but anybody's guess.
Barry