Just how big was this"galleon"..?
A little clarification is needed, methinks....
The Santa Clara, a replica of CC’s Nina, seems ridiculously small considering the number of crew it carried, but it was the Age of Sail, and they had to run the riggin’ and suchlike, and needed hands on deck 24 hours a day. And any vessel going into harm’s way also needed fighting men.
600 crew members???? That was what i was thinking. Thats too much for even a warship, and what is a warship hauling that much gold for? Something is out of whack there.
600, even including soldiers would be high. Probably would be high for a troop transport. Other old articles and wiki use the 600 number which is probably what the author used. But it was a treasure ship, returning I presume. Hard to imagine a bolstered crew, 100-150 could man it, at the cost of leaving treasure and/or cannon behind. Some soldiers needed for possible boarding, but I wouldn’t think that many. Doesn’t matter that much, but I suspect there are documents showing the number in Spain.
It’s a 62-gun ship with 3 masts, so it’s one of the big ones, and big galleons could apparently have 400-1000 crew members, if they were going into combat. Probably includes both sailors and marines.