Throughout David Weber's Safehold series, set in the age of sail, he describes naval galleons as commonly scattering sand across the deck as part of the procedure for preparing for combat. This sand provides traction so that the decks do not become slick when the bodily fluids of casualties among the crew are spilled during combat. Much the same way that we sand roads and walkways to provide traction against snow today
My question: was this really a common practice on naval ships during the Age of Sail? Humans each possess about 6 liters of blood, and I know some naval galleons could possess over 400 men, but it still seems somewhat...overly dramatic to believe that casualities among the crew frequently became so heavy in combat that their bodily fluids made the deck slick.
This doesn't seem to be accurate.
I take my information about this from Captain Frederick Marryat, who was both a successful writer and a real British navy captain who saw almost continuous action at sea from 1806 to 1830, serving in the Napoleonic wars, the War of 1812, and a colonial expedition to Burma amongst others.
He wrote several novels with vivid descriptions of various types of combat, giving a lot of detail - as you would expect from someone who had personally taken part in such actions, not just read about them - but there is no mention anywhere in his books of sanding the decks.
If you are interested in reading Marryat, a good book to start with is his semi-autobiographical novel Frank Mildmay http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/21554
It starts off slowly with his schooldays and how he went to sea, but it's a lot more interesting than any modern novel, because it's a lot more real. He actually lived through what he was writing about.