Self-imposed rules to prep for naval invasions

[Didz]

So, how many troops, that are not part of the crew, could the following ships really carry?

The simple answer from a practical viewpoint is none.

As has already been stated warships of this period were built to accomodate the number of guns they had, not the number of crew required to sail them and mann those guns. Therefore, the crew had to be squuezed into whatever space was left after the guns were in place. This actually meant that there was normally not enough room on a warship to accommodate the crew, and it was normal practice for men to share hammock space e.g. as one man got out of a hammock to start his watch, then his mate would climb into the still warm hamock to sleep.

The only way room could be made available for troops was to remove all the guns (and the men needed to man them) This practice was often used to convert a frigate into a fast troop transport by the French but even rigged 'en flute' a frigate would barely be able to transport more men than its original crew compliment possible 400 - 600 men depending on its size. Liners were not used for this purpose as without their guns they had too much top hamper and became unsailable.

As for more organised invasion fleets I've done a bit of research on Quebec which was one of the most notable amphibious operations of the period and come up with the following information so far.

Quebec 1759 - either -
British naval landing 9,000 troops transported in 141 vessels (63 men per ship)
British naval landing 8,500 troops transported in 250 vessels (34 men per ship)
http://www.answers.com/topic/quebec-battle-of

What we don't know is how many of the vessels were warships and how many transports. The battle map cleary shows a division of Frigates, Saunderson's main fleet and a fleet of transports. So, not all the ships were used to transport troops.

A Serjeant-Major of Gen. Hopson’s Grenadiers confirms that dedicated transports were used on this occasison e.g. Louisbourg, June 1st, 1759 We embark’d on board the Transport Harwood, bound on the Expedition to Canada ... However, he doesn't say how many of his regiment were embarked on that transport, or how many transports were in the fleet, and as usual our trusty historian's have contrived to ignore the very factual information that ought to justify their existence. No doubts its there somewhere buried in the archives but instead of publishing it we get plagerised drivel, and as you can see they can't even agree on that.

P.S. I may have had a bit of a breakthrough as I have managed to fine an online copy of 'The Life of Captain James Cook' who apparently was part of Saunderson's Fleet at Quebec, and he does mention some facts. As follows:

He was involved in advising on the fitting of 'The Three Brothers' a quite large ship of 600 tons formerly used in the coal trade and now fitted out with stalls for 40 horses.

Saunders Fleets consisted of 9 x Ships of the Line, 13 x Frigates, 119 x transports (so an average 75 men per transport? - however, that is ignoring horse, cannon, amunition, stores, food and baggage.)

This a link to the book if anyone is interested.
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=m...snum=3#PPT1,M1

Annoyingly, there are lots of details of naval operations and numbers of ships involved, but this time the writer merely dismissed the military aspects of the campaign, referring to the embarkation and disembarkation of 'troops' without mentioning numbers, type or regiment. So, to get the facts one would need to find an equally detailed account by someone writing the life story of Wolfe and cross-reference the naval operation with the military operations to establish which troops were in involved in which operation with which ships. Annoying given that the author must have had the historical records showing which troops emobark on which ships and where they went.

More to the point somewhere there will be a complete list of the transports available during the campaign and what their carrying capacity was, as without such a document the logistic's and quartermaster staff could not possibly have determined which ships were needed for each operation and which units to allocate to each.