Quote:
Originally Posted by trans
For a warship, very roughly one man per three tons burthen, much less for a merchant ship. In Treasure Island the Hispaniola, a schooner of "two hundred tons" was even handled temporarily and in a very rudimentary way by one boy advised by a wounded, hung-over pirate (although that was fiction).
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But not terribly unreasonable. You only after all need one sail up to move, and one hand on the wheel or tiller to steer.
Plenty of people have sailed around the world single handed, though not usually in anything that big. Yacht racing crews tend to run somewhere in the 4 to 8 range depending on the size of the boat and the rules set. A typical PC party probably *can* handle a smallish merchanter by themselves. Four per mast and two per gun is probably about the minimum to take a warship into combat though.