Ship crew complements question

[Billy1977]

Hello everybody, I now have the complete Time-Life Civil War book series (you know, the ones that were published in the early 1980s I think) and in the volume called The Blockade it has a really cool double-page spread where it shows a lot of the various ship types that served in the war. Well in comparing them I couldn't help but notice something: how (at least to me) the crew sizes seemed amazingly large especially for someone like myself who was more familiar with Cold War-era modern naval combatants. For example, it shows the little monitor Monitor and says her complement was no less than 57 men and she displaced only 987 tons! C.S.S. Virginia had 330 men packed into a ship only 275 feet long and displacing only 1,275 tons! Giant steam frigate Wabash had a crew it said of "about 600" men!

So I'm wondering, why did they have such large crews back then? I realize that in that era long before any kind of automation or mechanization a lot of things that could be done now by a push of a button had to be done by a bunch of men with brute force the old fashioned way like turning the capstan. And I realize that it was still the era of naval boarding parties so the larger the crew the more men you could commit to the boarding party, that makes sense. But it seems to me that a lot of that crew would have little else to do a lot of the time but holystoning the deck or polishing the same brass they just polished the day before or something. In other words tedious make-work kind of tasks. Anybody have any idea as to why the ships of that era were so packed to the gills with sailors? Was it absolutely necessary or were they erring on the side of caution in case of a scurvy problem debilitated many of them or to be able to make good battle losses in personnel after a heavy battle or what?

Many thanks in advance to whomever can answer this mystery for me.

 

[Drew]

They were transitioning at that time from the Age of Sail to engines. Plus, hierarchal beauracracies (like the U.S. Navy) favor having as many people as possible assigned to a job. The boss looks and feels more important when he or she's got the most amount of people working for him (or her).

That's just my observation, please don't demand "sources."

 

[USS ALASKA]

I realize that in that era long before any kind of automation or mechanization a lot of things that could be done now by a push of a button had to be done by a bunch of men with brute force the old fashioned way like turning the capstan.

Hello sir - may I suggest that you kinda answered your own question. No automation - hauling sail / moving coal / manning and servicing weapons that weighed incredible amounts / the day-to-day upkeep of a serviceable sea-going vessel - huge amount of effort in the era prior to any automation at all as we now know it.

Cheers,
USS ALASKA

 

[Billy1977]

Thank you both Drew and USS Alaska for your detailed, thoughtful and timely responses! Natural conservative hidebound nature of the Navy (any navy really), more underlings looks more important for the individual, in addition to what I was suggesting, I guess I was sort of on the right track somewhat with the lack of mechanization = doing it by hand the old fashioned (labor-intensive) way = more sailors than modern era ships might warrant for an equivalent displacement or tasking. Having never been in the Navy (or the Army) a lot of this stuff is guesswork to me but I find it fascinating as all get out. Thanks again!

 

[rebelatsea]

The same was true of any sailing, sailing/steam navy. When the ironclads came in the Admiralty didn't know how to describe them so, being single decked they were rated as frigates, but their complements were rated by their sailing rigs, which in some cases resulted in far too many men and in others too few, so that captains resorted to carrying "supernumeries" on the ships books. The situation wan't helped by the introduction of more mechanical handling of the big guns later, where a single weapon which might have needed a crew of 17 in 1860, only needed a crew of five in 1870. It wan't really until the mastless warship came in that crews could be assigned on a realistic basis.

 

[USS ALASKA]

Natural conservative hidebound nature of the Navy (any navy really), more underlings looks more important for the individual...

Sir, I believe this to be a characteristic of ANY large organized hierarchal (or not so obviously organized ) group of humans. Not just the Navy - Armed Forces / Government / Commercial / Religious / Political, which one DOSEN'T have this issue? As one very minor example - on American Railroads, for how long were extraneous crew members required to be onboard before the train moved?

In the USN's defense, (disclaimer - I'm a USAF guy), given the changes that were going on in technology in this time period, not knowing all of it's ins and outs, I'd want more than enough 'dudes' than too few if it came to an emergency...

Cheers,
USS ALASKA

 

[Carronade]

For one example, the 9" Dahlgren guns which formed most of the armament of ships like Wabash required crews of 17 men. Even with those seemingly large crews, ships couldn't fully man the guns on both sides simultaneously. Conversely, the men needed for combat were far in excess of those needed for normal sailing or steaming. Some operations like hoisting sail, loading stores, or coaling required manpower; but there was inevitably a lot of idle time, no doubt part of the reason for the navy's obsession with spit and polish.

 

[Mark F. Jenkins]

Another item is to be cautious about tonnage figures... there were several different methods of calculating tonnage which did not agree with each other and weren't always consistently applied, and it can be difficult (sometimes impossible) to find out which method was being used. They're better thought of as a rough index of relative size among ships of the same era; it's definitely not modern displacement tonnage.

 

[DaveBrt]

Manpower requirements are hard to tie down when new types of ships and new technology are introduced. Even in the 1960's, the USN created a new class of ships, the Newport LST, but undermanned it so badly that the ships did not have the hours available to do the required maintenance and watch keeping. Within a year of the Newport reporting to the fleet, manning went up by 25 men per ship. Looks like the same thing is happening to the new LCS.

In the CW, ships had to be able to send men ashore in landing/raiding parties and on prizes captured. They also had to continue to operate in the combat zone after suffering combat casualties. Large crews provided the "extra" manpower to handle these requirements and still remain fully capable.

 

[rebelatsea]

Another item is to be cautious about tonnage figures... there were several different methods of calculating tonnage which did not agree with each other and weren't always consistently applied, and it can be difficult (sometimes impossible) to find out which method was being used. They're better thought of as a rough index of relative size among ships of the same era; it's definitely not modern displacement tonnage.

An absolute B***Y nightmare in our period Mark, when even different ports used different measurements to calculate tonnage, and most writings don't define the figure as BOM (Builders Old measurement), deadweight, light and so on ad infinitum. In sheer self defence I evolved a formula which is:
Length at Waterline x Beam at Waterline x Maximum Draught, or just the Draught figure given if it's not defined with the result divided by 70. This give a (unscientific maybe) reasonable idea of the size of the vessel.

 

[Talos]

Hello sir - may I suggest that you kinda answered your own question. No automation - hauling sail / moving coal / manning and servicing weapons that weighed incredible amounts / the day-to-day upkeep of a serviceable sea-going vessel - huge amount of effort in the era prior to any automation at all as we now know it.

Cheers,
USS ALASKA

In addition to that, crew numbers were going up too in this transition period. The addition of steam engines to a large warship meant the addition of dozens of engineers, stokers, etc, in addition to the preexisting sail handlers (they didn't mix them). First Rates in the Royal Navy, for instance, went from ~950 to 1,100 people with the shift from sail to aux steam.