[yarddog]

The thing which surprises me is that a ship of that era had well over a thousand sailors on it.

[Random Access]

The thing which surprises me is that a ship of that era had well over a thousand sailors on it.

Yeah, I question that also. That sound really high unless they were transporting soldiers. It does not take that many men to sail a ship and if it did, they would be all over each other.

[Dan Cooper]

The thing which surprises me is that a ship of that era had well over a thousand sailors on it.

You would need that many to fight the ship. A hundred gun ship, assuming that the just found ship was a first or second rate ship of the line, would need a crew of 7-8 to serve each gun, plus more to sail the ship, etc., and the Marines on board. Warship crews were very large. Still are I expect.

[BenLurkin]

Ditto.

Could almost see it for one of those overseized Spanish Men of War but even then...

[Oztrich Boy]

The thing which surprises me is that a ship of that era had well over a thousand sailors on it.

Figure it out. 110 guns each requiring 8-16 men, to man half of then takes c.650 crew. Officers, midshipmen, Warrant/petty officers, ships boys adds 100-150. Some men are presumably still needed for ship handling during battle.

[Bean Counter]

http://www.nmm.ac.uk/explore/sea-and-ships/facts/faqs/royal-navy-and-battles/navy%27s-%27first-rate%27-ships

“Navy’s ‘first rate’ ships

A ship’s ‘rate’ was basically decided by the number of guns she carried, from the largest 120- gun First Rate, down to Sixth Rate 20-gun ships. The smaller ‘unrated’ vessels (sloops, brigs, bomb vessels, etc) were commanded by more junior officers (Commanders, Lieutenants) but a ‘rated’ ship was always a Captain’s command and always ship rigged, that is with three square rigged masts.

First Rate: The biggest ships of the fleet, with their gun batteries carried on three decks, were generally used as flagships and fought in the centre of the line-of-battle. They were armed with a minimum of 100 heavy cannon, carried a crew of about 850 and were over 2000 tons Builder’s Measure (a formula for calculating the capacity of the ship, not the displacement of the ship as is the practice nowadays).”

You can see that on a First Rate ship, if you add a contingent of Marines, ( a very common practice in the British Navy) you can see how the crew can easily be over 1000 men.

It takes a lot, and I mean A LOT of manpower to run a ship like “Victory”. Just servicing one gun took the combined efforts of about five men or more depending on the size of the gun, and it was the requirements of the number of mounted guns that drove the size of the crew.

[fella]

In the book “Seize The Fire” Adam Nicolson describes in horrific gory detail how at the Battle of Trafalgar the English cannonballs fired into the rear of the French and Spanish ships at close range,tore down the whole length of those ships doing absolute murder on the men packed into the gun-decks.