Yes.
Naked, no wand, and rk1 ice you can solo rundel/siren (perhaps even hard) with 0 deaths. Rk Firebolt and Lightning Bolt make the job even easier, as does cc wand for ice and/or fire. Thunder is very doable even hardmode siren.
Melee needs a lot of strength, rk1 wm, cm, etc. to try to get enough damage to one shot non-hardmode bsr's with a crit, or 2-3 noncrit mills. Tactics like windheal were developed as a stop-gap measure to try and overcome WM's inherant weakness as a move when used against them. Magic, even basic bolts, rips the little bugger's hp to shreds, with no pd lowering the damage. Magic simply is the more efficient method of killing them, and why hybrid builds are superior to pures.
Don't get me wrong, WM is still the winmill skill. That it can even be used at all in this situation shows that, but it is not the best skill to use in every situation, there are exceptions. This is one of them.
Show me that you can solo rundal siren hard naked with no wand and r1 ice. You're going to need 40+ icebolts to kill 1 ship rat (~90 seconds).
A spawn of them is 9 minutes.
At the rate of that, you're going to d/c before you get to floor 2.
But yes, this is an exception.
Melee just happens to suck on black ship rats due to their insane heavy stander.
On non-hard mode rats, you need a 1000 damage hit to finish off their 360 HP. That's pretty much two windmills for a midgame player with the crappiest enchants ever.
I've seen people in game use windheal in alby intermediate [and HM] alot (including me).