What are the vital crew positions of an old 3 masted tall ship?

Question

I'm thinking of things like Ship's Captain, Doctor, Cook, Carpenter, Navigator and such.

Answer 1

In the days of sail the breakdown would be: Captain, who would not stand a watch but be available whenever he was needed; Chief Mate, Second Mate Third Mate,,,,these would be the officers in charge of a 4 hour watch in rotation; there wouldn't be a designated Navigator; the Captain and Chief Mate would know navigation, and maybe the 2nd and 3rd, too.....

Sailing vessels almost never carried a doctor;first aid would be done by the Master or maybe the Cook....

there would be specialist sailors.......the carpenter, the boatswain ( bo's'n) and the sailmaker who would be in charge of carpentry, rigging and sails respectively. They would stand watch with the regular sailors, who would be rated Able Bodied...who could, as the phrase went, " hand, reef and steer" and Ordinary , who could pull on ropes. The Cook, and maybe a cooks mate, wouldn't stand rotating watches but work something like 5AM to 8 PM....but everyone would turn out with the call "All Hands"........if you were lucky you did 4 on 8 off; but with call outs, regular repairs and what not it would be unusual to ever get 8 hours off at a time more than maybe two days in a row, and this on a trip that could last 120 days!

Answer 2

obviously all of those positions is important. When the ship is under way, the person at the helm is in charge. He tells the crew what needs to be done in the way of sheeting in sails, raising sails, reefing sails, etc. The amount of crew needed for a boat depends on how big of a sailboat you have and how many things need to happen at one time as well as how fast you want those things to happen. Also a factor is in how the boat is rigged.

Racing boats usually have more crew on deck since they want to do things like tack, sheet, etc in a hurry.

Navigator will tell you where you are and which way you need to go in order to get to where you're going. The Tactician is the person giving you the shortest line and letting the skipper know when he should tack in order to win a race.

If you're looking at an old war ship, the guy in charge of getting the cannons ready to fire may be important to you.