Actually a quick google turns up references saying 15 inches, 17 inches, 16 inches, 19 inches and 21 inches. Maybe not very standardised.
William Golding’s To the Ends of the Earth is an interesting look at life aboard a British warship in the Age of Sail. The movie is pretty good, too: http://www.amazon.com/Ends-Earth-Benedict-Cumberbatch/dp/B000NJL4QC/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1237901551&sr=1-1
To overgeneralize: space was extremely limited, food was crappy, discipline was harsh and hygiene was poor. It’s no wonder the Admiralty resorted to press gangs to snag anyone who might be able to serve as a sailor - imagine being grabbed in the street by a bunch of sailors, dragged off to sea and kept away from home perhaps for years - and all legal, too! Impressment - Wikipedia
That many men weren’t needed on a merchant ship, but the maneuvers needed to be performed very quickly in a Royal Navy ship. Instead of sending just a few men out on an arm, they could send 5 times as many and have the sails trimmed in a fraction of the time.
Nowadays states just call it “conscription” or “selective sevice”:dubious:
I’m not surprised< ! > It surely must have varied from period to period and ship to ship. Perhaps the 14 inches was the absolute minimum ever allowed.
I’ll try and check some of my reference books when I’m home.
I believe the Royal Navy officially allotted 18’ for each man’s sleeping hammock. Although in practice it was more because at any given time, a certain portion of the crew would be on watch. However, to the general question, yes, sailing ships were massively crowded.
Duh: Read then post. I see I was beat to it and that 14" was the correct number. :smack:
Lacking machinery and electronics, a lot of men were used for things like keeping lookout, taking in and letting out sail (requiring a lot of people), and various menial labor tasks like caulking and swabbing. Men might even be used from time to time as ballast, typically standing at the windward rail while the ship was heeling in strong wind.
Also, in battle, there would be men assigned to repair duty, musketeers in the tophamper (okay, I just wanted to use a nautical word), gunners, powder monkeys, and various other combat-related duties – but you’d still need people to handle sails and rigging, and probably a lookout or two would be smart.
Plus, not to put it delicately, on a warship you need extra crew to take over duties from people who will be killed or wounded in battle. Sailing ship warfare was profligate with the lives of crew. John Keegan (in The Price of Admiralty) makes the point that, despite all the talk about sinking and burning ships, black powder & sail warfare was mostly an exercise in crew-killing, not “ship-killing.” Few battles were won explicitly because one side had a lot of extra idle hands aboard, but plenty of battles were decided by crew casualties.
So yes, these ships were crowded.
I’m under the impression that in many (most?) engagements of the time, sinking the other ship wasn’t generally the goal - capturing it was. Especially if it was a merchant ship operating for the other side - the prize money paid out for such things was pretty significant.
Ships were valuable items, and while it was possible to eventually blow a ship to matchsticks with the weapons of the day that usually involved such carnage among the crew that it would give up long before that happened. Instantaneous catastrophic damage that would sink a vessel outright wasn’t that easy to achieve - more commonly an accumulation of damage, the loss of one or more masts, and the death of many of his crew would cause a captain to strike his colors and surrender rather than fight an increasingly-lopsided battle to the bitter end.
Boarding an opposing ship and subduing its crew in hand-to-hand combat wasn’t unusual, and sheer numbers were certainly an advantage in such a situation. When one did capture another ship, typically a sizeable chunk of the capturing ship’s crew would transfer over to the new acquisition to (a) sail it, and (b) keep the unfriendly crew under wraps. Factors like this encouraged staffing men-of-war with crews quite a bit larger than the minimum needed to operate the sails and guns.
The Duke of Clarence, the future King William IV, served in the Royal Navy. He obtained special permission for Royal Navy officers to drink the Loyal Toast while seated, since they were apt to knock their heads on the deck above when they rose to toast the King.
I would imagine as well to supply prize crews for ships taken in battle.
Declan
I just finished reading The Billy Ruffian (highly recommended, BTW) in which Cordingly states that it was very rare to sink a warship in the course of battle. In all the years of the Napoleonic Wars, some ships-of-the-line were purposefully burnt, some where driven onto rocks, and some exploded, but only a handful actually sustained enough damage to sink.
Going back to the crew of HMS Surprise I’ve found a breakdown of the complement of a 28 gun 6th rate (in The Wooden World, An anatomy of the Georgian Navy, by N A M Rodger).
As given in Master & Commander the total complement is 200, made up of:
1 Captain
1 Lieutenant
6 Warrant Sea Officers (the Master, Boatswain, Gunner, Surgeon, Carpenter, and Purser)
6 Inferior Warrant Officers (the Chaplain, Cook, Surgeon’s Mate, Master at Arms, etc)
28 Petty Officers incl 2 Master’s Mates and 4 Midshipmen (plus the Captain’s Clerk, Gunner’s Mate etc, etc)
5 Idlers (the Sailmaker’s Crew and Carpenter’s Crew)
20 Servants
4 Widows’ Men (No, I don’t know what they were!)
91 Seamen
38 Marines (1 Lieut, 1 Sgt, 1 Cpl, and 35 marines)
This is actually from the period of the 7 Years War in the 1750s so it may have changed by 1812 when Captain Aubrey was captain of the Surprise and I strongly suspect a ship was rarely up to full strength.
The same book gives the 14 inches to the hammock figure for a 74 of the same period but, unfortunately, does not give a source.
Widow’s men were fictional sailors maintained on official ships complements. So called because their wages went to the widows of deceased seamen. Wiki has an article on the practice:
If you want to, in detail, see what it was like get Biesty’s Cross Sections Man-Of-War. It blew me away. Absolutely stunning.
Or Stowaway.
Wish I had the book handy for exact numbers, but Keegan makes that point that just HMS Victory, carrying 100 guns, outgunned Napoleon’s artillery at Waterloo, not even taking into account the enormous size difference between the guns. IIRC, he said that it wasn’t until the Dreadnoughts and their ilk that a single ship packed the same throw weight as a broadside from a Ship of the Line. Fifty guns per side, 100 guns if shooting from both, and a minimum of four guys per gun WHILE maneuvering under sail = One hell of a lot of men.
I believe survey has been mentioned in this thread, but on long trips and back scurvy alone could kill off 30% or more of the crew, and definite protection against it (i.e. getting vitamin C in fresh fruit/raw meat/saurkraut) was only generally accepted in the late 18th century).
I suppose I should clarify – I believe Keegan was addressing a particular fad among historians for arguing about exactly when “ship killing” replaced “man killing” as the principal means of victory at sea, and some historians’ tendency to explain Nelson’s victories as “ship killing” because he “broke the line from windward” – a re-evaluation with which Keegan did not agree (holding that Trafalgar was a man-killing battle and, as you said, that sinkings were rare).
My brother slept in these. Saved him from hot racking - though it screwed up his rest if they were moving torpedoes around.
He served on the USS Boise and Tucson in the mid-90s. Were either of these your boats?
I visited both - it’s like living under a car hood. Very different from my nice roomy CG.