Hi! I have looked at a number of sources and cannot come to a conclusive answer. As the title suggests, I'd like to know how many troops would be able to be transported on various ships around 1500-1600s. I've seen a number of sources say that a crew of 50 for a Carrack or 20-30 for a Caravel. But, mainly I find sources stating how much tonnage of cargo it can carry. I'm unfamiliar on how to translate that to actual troop counts.
How would a medieval army, for example, transport 15,000 soldiers from one coast to another? I understand that they may use a fleet of many variety of ships. I'm interested in knowing which types would be mostly used and how many actual soldiers, not crew, would be able to land ashore.
You may find the Mary Rose useful in this regard.
She was built in around 1511 and sank in 1545. She was an English war ship.
Because of how and where she sank, she is extremely well preserved and was raised just a few decades ago.
In 1513 she had a crew list of 415 men. But this would swell to 700 in war time.
(source: https://maryrose.org/life-on-board/)
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I wrote the above and then saw you referred to transports! I've left it above in the hope it's interesting and may be tangentally useful.
In terms of a couple of pieces of evidence for your actual question:.
I know it's a few centuries early, but in 1066 when the Norman's invaded England, the estimate of the number of ships is 700-800. This ferried an army of over 7000 men, but also their 2000+ horses, weapons etc.
In 1688 William of Orange invaded England by invitation ("The Glorious Revolution") . He used 260 ships to transport 14000 men. He also had a lot of horses.
So in 1066 it is only about 10 soldiers per boat (but the boats were built extremely quickly and only needed a short journey)
In 1688, its about 53 men per boat - but the boats are much, much larger.
In both, the transport of horses, and the difficulties re the same, shouldn't be underestimated.