Chapter 6 - The Merchant Seamen

Summary

So far the ship's crew has been something of an abstraction, merely an indicator of technical conditions in ships and on sea routes. It is time now to take a closer look at the men themselves - who they were, how they came to the sea and what rewards it gave them. We may start by considering a few random examples, drawn from various trades and periods, to introduce the typical ranks and skills that combined to form a merchant ship's company.

In the very first years of the seventeenth century, an estimate was made for the crew of a ship of 160 tons to go to Málaga. She was to carry a master and two mates, a boatswain, gunner and carpenter, a surgeon and eighteen hands; a crew of twenty-five in all. Abraham of 200 tons, which made voyages to Barbados in the thirties, carried a master and two mates, a boatswain, gunner and carpenter, but in this vessel the last three each had a mate, and there was a specialist cook and a surgeon besides the deckhands. The number of hands varied between seventeen and nineteen, making a total crew of twenty-eight to thirty. Jumping forward another thirty years, we may pick out a very different ship, the foreign-built Falcon of 200 tons, trading to the Baltic in 1672. She had only seventeen men in all; a master and only one mate, a boatswain, gunner and carpenter, a surgeon and eleven men and boys. Even the gunner might have been omitted in these waters safe from piracy, had not war with the Netherlands just broken out.

The East Indiaman presents a very different picture. Setting out for the far side of the world on a voyage which might well last two years, facing many hazards from disease as well as from weather and the king's enemies, she began her voyage well provided with supplies of all kinds, including men - both seamen and specialists. Take Colchester, of 450 tons, for instance, which sailed at the end of 1703. In addition to the master she had five mates and three midshipmen. The boatswain had two mates or servants, the gunner three and the carpenter four. There were cook and cooper, each with a mate, besides a steward and a captain's steward with two assistants, a purser, a caulker and his mate, a joiner and two tailors.