So I'm working on a campaign where the players will participate in a great nautical adventure with many ships on a mission to find a new continent. I wanted to attempt to flesh out the ships crews a bit to allow the plyers to get to know the npcs for the long trek ahead. I ran into a bit of a dilemma, I have no idea who should be on the ships. So I figured I'd break down the options and percentiles here and get some advice from everyone so as to define the crew dynamics better. How many members of the crew would be on a ship fitting into any of the below categories in your opinion:

1: Crew members of the Captains race (or the owner of the ships race) or from the captains area of typical activity.

2: Crew members belonging to races common to the kingdom or region employing said ship or captain.

3: If the ship is manufactured in a region other than the home region of the captain or owner, how many Crew members would be of races found commonly in that region.

4: Crew members who joined from random areas and regions with loose connection to the mission.

Sub Question: To those who may actually have sailing experience of a bit of nautical expertise, from a pirating standpoint or a general standpoint how many people were commonly crewed aboard a 3 Masted Tern Schooner or a 4 Masted Trade Schooner?

You might want to check the Ghosts of Saltmarsh, there is a whole appendix dealing with the ship, its crew and nautical adventures.

Edit: as for the racial distribution, it highly depends on your world: are humans and elves at war with each other? Then there won't be any in their enemies crew. Are dwarves second class citizens in the kingdom? They probably won't be officers on the ships...

Quote from Cyrasil >>

You might want to check the Ghosts of Saltmarsh, there is a whole appendix dealing with the ship, its crew and nautical adventures.

Edit: as for the racial distribution, it highly depends on your world: are humans and elves at war with each other? Then there won't be any in their enemies crew. Are dwarves second class citizens in the kingdom? They probably won't be officers on the ships...

Agree on checking out Saltmarsh.  An adventure I ran made reference to the two master in the DMG and gave it a crew of 20, presumably a split between actual crew and boarding party.  Not sure.

As for "make up" of the crew, sure contemporary sea pirates tend to be of a homogenous make up (Somali pirates, pirates based out of varied Pacific islands, etc).  However, if you want inspiration from that mythic golden age of piracy, think "motley crew." That is the make up can have license to go against to social cultural norms of the land.  Maybe dwarves are second class on the land, which is why the Captain's a Dwarf because they're accepted for the leadership and tactical talents.  Maybe elves and humans are at war on the land, but elves and humans work as hardy shipmates in the pirates's life.  It wasn't uncommon in the "age of pirates" for pirates to be of people often traded for slavery, but at sea were accepted as crew and could even rise to command ships, maybe even obtain of letter of marque (basically, state sanctioned piracy or a license to pirate a nation's enemies).  These are people who banded together to break the rules of maritime codes ... why would they adhere to other social norms?  Get as weird or as unconventional a makeup as you want.  Or if you want to impose racial biases on the crew, go ahead.

Ships point of origin/mfr doesn't matter.  Not many ships were chartered and constructed as pirate ships.  Rather they were stolen, often taken as plunder at sea.  Others were mutiny, whoever survived the fight may have stayed on as crew but maybe as soon as they made port a bunch of crew deserted so the ship took on anyone able bodied looking to join the venture.

As for "make up" of the crew, sure contemporary sea pirates tend to be of a homogenous make up (Somali pirates, pirates based out of varied Pacific islands, etc).  However, if you want inspiration from that mythic golden age of piracy, think "motley crew." That is the make up can have license to go against to social cultural norms of the land.  Maybe dwarves are second class on the land, which is why the Captain's a Dwarf because they're accepted for the leadership and tactical talents.  Maybe elves and humans are at war on the land, but elves and humans work as hardy shipmates in the pirates's life.  It wasn't uncommon in the "age of pirates" for pirates to be of people often traded for slavery, but at sea were accepted as crew and could even rise to command ships, maybe even obtain of letter of marque (basically, state sanctioned piracy or a license to pirate a nation's enemies).  These are people who banded together to break the rules of maritime codes ... why would they adhere to other social norms?  Get as weird or as unconventional a makeup as you want.  Or if you want to impose racial biases on the crew, go ahead. 

Yeah, I agree, my description fits more a ship sailing the kingdoms flag (either officially or as a privateers)

Edit: one thing that might be interesting could be some "local translator" - if your ship is sailing in some distant unexplored waters, some local might have joined the crew. You can make him some really exotic race/build like Loxodon among the PHb races...

I have perused Salt Marsh and when it comes down to the quantity of the crew members that I have covered using real world numbers (there are many more kinds of ships than salt marsh gives credence too I had intended to use, such as a Barbary Fusta, and a Chinese Treasure Junk). The notable exception being the schooners (my research seems to indicate that a 3/4 Masted Schooner [comparable in size to a three masted Brigantine sailing ship] would require as few as 10 people to operate, which seems a bit off).

My intended question was perhaps a bit muddled so let me clarify a bit.

Lets say we have a ship built in a dwarven kingdom, owned and captained by an elf whos primary activity is along the coast of an elven trade route, but for this mission the ship is contracted to work under the interest of a human conglomerate, and has a few spare crew picked up from all over. In your opinion, what percentage of each faction would be most likely on distribution.

i.e. how many are likely to be from each respective kingdom, if given a rough estimate of say 100 people total on board that ship.

Edit: They are not a band of unorganized pirates. (At least not until the party decides to suddenly become murder hobos)

For a pirate crew, I'd be going for entirely one race with maybe one exception, or an entirely mixed crew of outcasts who are judged on their own merits and not their race.

For a merchant crew, It would be largely the same mix as on land, and bear in mind that some crewmembers jump ship at ports, and others get on board. The crew won't always be the same, you'll likely have a core of fixed crew and then an ever-changing mix of others which can be changed at each port. Captain, first mate, quartermaster, and other specific roles I don't know about would likely form the core and would have formed when the ship was commissioned, bought or stolen, and then deckhands (just the general sailors) could be anything from anywhere the ship has sailed since then.

Quote from MrPC0X >>

I have perused Salt Marsh and when it comes down to the quantity of the crew members that I have covered using real world numbers (there are many more kinds of ships than salt marsh gives credence too I had intended to use, such as a Barbary Fusta, and a Chinese Treasure Junk). The notable exception being the schooners (my research seems to indicate that a 3/4 Masted Schooner [comparable in size to a three masted Brigantine sailing ship] would require as few as 10 people to operate, which seems a bit off).

My intended question was perhaps a bit muddled so let me clarify a bit.

Lets say we have a ship built in a dwarven kingdom, owned and captained by an elf whos primary activity is along the coast of an elven trade route, but for this mission the ship is contracted to work under the interest of a human conglomerate, and has a few spare crew picked up from all over. In your opinion, what percentage of each faction would be most likely on distribution.

i.e. how many are likely to be from each respective kingdom, if given a rough estimate of say 100 people total on board that ship.

Edit: They are not a band of unorganized pirates. (At least not until the party decides to suddenly become murder hobos)

So are they pirates or not pirates?  Motley in background does not mean messy in the performance of their mission.

I'm also confused as to what you're asking, or why you're asking.  I'm presuming you're not talking about maritime activity in an established game world (and I don't know if anyone's every did a thorough treatment of any of the them). This is your world, how seafaring works in terms of staffing is entirely up to you.  If it's the policy of lands invested in maritime trade or warfare to have ships with particularly racial or national complements, make it so.  If ship crewing is more reflective of historic and current IRL maritime staffing (as long as you got the rating in the role you're signing on for you got it, don't matter where you're from), make that so.

I'd only make an exception for diplomatic vessels, military navies (and that's more a contemporary reflection, historically it wasn't always the case, plus you got the letters of marque / privateers thing) and relatedly trading in times of war for certain types of precious cargoes.  

Your only real barrier might be language.

As far as your skepticism on crew build out for schooners, check this if you haven't already, the parts where they describe the schooners and their crew size and cargo load size:

https://maritimemuseum.novascotia.ca/research/sailing-ship-rigs

I grew up near the towns/port Moby Dick started off in, so this tracks with all the discussion of that business I soaked from school field trips to the respective museums etc.  Those are just the crew to make the ship sail.   If it was a whaling ship or a military ship or pirate vessel you'd likely have more crew on hand as gunners, boarding parties or small boat crews.

 Then of course you have the "big ships" (or tall ships) which complement differently, but I think, and your research may bear differently, your talking about very different philosophies in ship design here, which would lead to different labor demands:

https://www.nytimes.com/1986/05/18/magazine/a-guide-to-the-tall-ships.html

1: No they are not pirates, and I never said they were, they are on a mission to find a new continent and the contingent of ships the party will be with contains more than 30 some ships and roughly 4800 people of almost a dozen varying races. One such goal of the expedition is to settle the new continent and the actions of the players and the expedition will heavily affect the world going forward (this is kind of a prologue, I dm for the long game)

2: The reason I am asking is because this kind of thing is (as noted) not something that happened often or at all by historical standards and saying "you can do what you want" does not actually help me. I ask questions like these primarily to get the input of other skilled dms so I have an idea of how to move forward or to get a second opinion before I jump into something. I never hurts to know how others would handle the situation before you attempt it.

This is an organized group of individuals from multiple backgrounds and the party will have moderate command of more than just one or two ships. Example: a Chinese Treasure Junk (crew size 400-500 people) is made only in china, but if one comes under the ownership of someone from another region, say the ottomans, that changes the demographic of the crew substantially (i.e. from being fully chinese to being partially chinese based on it's new area of operation), not to mention it's hard to come by a "motley crew" of 4 to 5 hundred people, let alone 4800. I was only asking for a generalized opinion, percentiles, or guesses because I wanted the opinions of other dms. Asking for a generic guess is easier than me having to spend hours trying to roll dice or build tables until I end up with results that are both feasible and satisfying.

3: My skepticism is quelled, I'm still surprised but I do thank you for the information, that helps.

You may say you never said they were; in which case you should re-titled your thread "how to staff a maritime expedition" as opposed to "how to fill out a Pirate crew"....

So are these 30 vessels under on charter or order ... to discover one place as a single fleet?  In historical exploration ... that's odd.  Generally expeditions into the "unknown" whether over land or sea are high risk and high probability of catastrophe, so tend to be a lot smaller in scale.  Look at actual history of maritime exploration and a 30 ship unified command doesn't happen.  If you're talking about a sort of expeditionary force to a known locale, that's a bit different though pretty robust.  Now if it's a Battlestar Galatica type situation, where they're both an ark of a destroyed civilization also on a mission of discovery, sure, but again your make up is not going to be clean but motley.

As far as your need for stats as opposed to a staffing logic determined by your game world, as an experienced DM I'm still unclear why you want input on percentages of crew for a gameworld whose makeup and customs you know best (since you've developed a long game).  If the practice of the people launching this expedition is to have mono ethnic or mono nationalist crews, do that.  If the people launching the expedition will take anyone will to serve on a high risk assignment, do that.  As for as your dig about motley crews of 4800, again if you're creating a unified command, that's very very different from what your original post implied, and your topic, though I'd say it's entirely doable.  A smaller scale act but higher risk was the Dunkirk relief effort where if you had a boat, you were asked to join the effort.  In your case, your looking for skilled people because you presumably have the boats.  That could come from some selected ranks of some national corps, or it could be whoever they can find.  So it's more world building than some sort of stat play.  Sure I have table to reflect makes up of ships, tavern rooms, military units etc.  But what's the point of sharing them since their specific to my world?

1) check the name of this thread:-)

2) It really depends on you world. Are the races in you world mostly isolationists/xenophobic? So will be the most of the crew. Are most of the kingdoms/cities mostly multicultural than so will be the ships. Would contracting the ship without its crew work? Yes it would. Would Contracting ship with the crew? It also would. Would anything in between work (like using own officers/marines and contracting the rest of the crew). Again, yes it would (if the respective populations are allies).

1) yeah I see your point, that is my bad and I take the L on that one, I have updated the thread title accordingly.

In the end I feel like my own mistakes have muddled my questions enough that further discussion will likely not yield any fruit. That is my b and I feel it's probably better to just drop the topic and let it die. My indecisiveness aside, I feel that I've been way to unclear unintentionally and it just caused far more harm than good. From this point further, explaining the concept I'm going with, even if I did do so correctly, would inevitably just be more complicated than my initial questions and I don't really want to bother anyone more than I have.

I don't think it's a bad topic and brainstorming by its nature can be a bit muddy if not rough and tumble.  Since you're developing a campaign idea, I'd suggest restarting your topic in the DMs Only thread.  Use the corrected title and say something like "my new campaign" or I'm taking my campaign in this direction.  You want to have a big flottilla exploring, give a rough idea of what you want to do and then say you're looking for help fleshing out the idea for details or story logic or whatever.  I'm interested in learning where you see the idea going myself, and I'm sure others on this thread would be too.