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Okay, so I am in the military so I know how many crew members it takes to run a military ship and the one thing that I always appreciated about Warhammer 40k books was their attention to this detail in the fluff. They talk about all the humans and servitors it takes to support a single Space Marine Battle Barge, that a Chapter couldn't crew one themselves without upping the amount of Marines in Chapter quite drastically. And even sometimes, like the Techmarines, the Space Marines sometimes help support the crews but the thought occurred to me the other day as I was appreciating this, where do all those people come from? The Imperial Navy is its own faction within the Imperium and it greatly supports the Astra Militarum (Quick side-note, if the Imperial Guard got re-named, does that mean the Imperial Navy will get the same eventually?) but does the Imperial Navy also give to the Space Marine Chapters to crew their battle barges or do the Space Marine Chapters themselves take care of this fact and select their own crews? This definitely goes for the same for the crews of Inquisitorial ships and the Grey Knight ships who have to have the utmost secrecy? Anyone ever come across a tid-bit in the fluff somewhere that just comes out and says were the crews for these factions come?

Battle Barges are overseen by small groups of Astartes, who command the Chapter Serfs manning the guns and operations stations.

Is it just Chapter Serfs that run the bulk of the ship then? And if that is the case, what type of military training to do their receive and from who? From the way the atmosphere is done, those that run the ship are organized into some type of military organization which is why at first I thought it was the Imperial Navy. Are Chapter Serfs indoctrinated into some kind of military lifestyle?

Pure speculation but maybe they get volunteers from the navy cadets to crew their ships.

Each Imperial ship has whole family lines whose existence revolves around the inner workings of the ship. This is what it means to be Voidborn. It's certainly possible that the men and women pulling the cables to realign the macro batteries and shoveling raw ores into huge engines are of the same family lines that served on the ship back during the Heresy. In other words, they came with the ship

The ones giving the orders and manning the bridge are more likely to be proper chapter serfs or naval officers who have been requisitioned.

Battlefleet Gothic Armada's words on the subject:

Unlike the vessels of the Imperial Navy, a Space
Marine ship has a relatively small crew. A Space
Marine is far too valuable to waste in manning a
gun or watching a surveyor screen, and so only
the officers aboard a vessel are likely to be
Space Marines, as well as the few Techmarines
who oversee the engines and perform other
mechanical duties. Almost all the ship’s systems
are run and monitored by servitors; half-human
cyborgs who are wired into the vessel’s
weapons, engines and communications
apparatus. There are also a few hundred
Chapter serfs to attend to other duties, such as
routine cleaning and maintenance, serving the
Space Marines during meal times and other
such honoured tasks. These serfs come from the
Chapter’s home planet or the enclave they
protect, many of them Novitiates or applicants
who have failed some part of the recruiting or
training process. These serfs are fanatically loyal
to their superhuman masters, and indoctrinated
into many of the lesser orders of the Chapter’s
Cult. Although human, they still benefit from
remarkable training and access to superior
weaponry than is usually found on a naval
vessel, making them a fearsome prospect in a
boarding action – even without the support of
their genetically modified lords.

 Gashrog wrote:
Battlefleet Gothic Armada's words on the subject:

Spoiler:

Unlike the vessels of the Imperial Navy, a Space
Marine ship has a relatively small crew. A Space
Marine is far too valuable to waste in manning a
gun or watching a surveyor screen, and so only
the officers aboard a vessel are likely to be
Space Marines, as well as the few Techmarines
who oversee the engines and perform other
mechanical duties. Almost all the ship’s systems
are run and monitored by servitors; half-human
cyborgs who are wired into the vessel’s
weapons, engines and communications
apparatus. There are also a few hundred
Chapter serfs to attend to other duties, such as
routine cleaning and maintenance, serving the
Space Marines during meal times and other
such honoured tasks. These serfs come from the
Chapter’s home planet or the enclave they
protect, many of them Novitiates or applicants
who have failed some part of the recruiting or
training process. These serfs are fanatically loyal
to their superhuman masters, and indoctrinated
into many of the lesser orders of the Chapter’s
Cult. Although human, they still benefit from
remarkable training and access to superior
weaponry than is usually found on a naval
vessel, making them a fearsome prospect in a
boarding action – even without the support of
their genetically modified lords.

I remember reading exactly that. Space marine ships are more expensive and complex. More automation, more severtors, less humans. The humans that are there are entirely seperate from the imperial navy with perhaps a few resources on loan from the admech(who built the ship).

Okay so it is manned by a lot of Servitors and then any humans get specially trained by the Space Marines themselves in an almost paramilitary fashion. That actually is pretty awesome.

A Battle Barge will probably have 50 or so Astartes and thousands of Chapter Serfs/Servitors.

 Harriticus wrote:
A Battle Barge will probably have 50 or so Astartes and thousands of Chapter Serfs/Servitors.

A lot more than fifty. Maybe fifty in command, but there're a lot more to assault enemy ships via Thunderhawk or boarding torpedo... or teleporter if you're on, say, the Nicor.

The 3rd edition Ultramarines codex included a full order of battle of the Ultramarine chapter, it's old but it's the only time GW has done a full writeup. Fleet Command having 48 "Pilots, Gunnery Officers and Command Crews" this was separate from the actual companies. That was for a fleet of 11 capital ships and 12 escorts.

You're likely only looking at the captain and one or two senior officers being marines, the rest would be serfs. Offensive operations via boarding torpedo, Thunderhawk etc would be the purview of the companies stationed on board rather than actual crew.

In a iron hand book, a ship was captained by a badly wounded marine, lost legs in a hover chair.

Not quite combat standard but able to vaporise enemies with lances and macro cannons

 Gashrog wrote:
The 3rd edition Ultramarines codex included a full order of battle of the Ultramarine chapter, it's old but it's the only time GW has done a full writeup. Fleet Command having 48 "Pilots, Gunnery Officers and Command Crews" this was separate from the actual companies. That was for a fleet of 11 capital ships and 12 escorts.

You're likely only looking at the captain and one or two senior officers being marines, the rest would be serfs. Offensive operations via boarding torpedo, Thunderhawk etc would be the purview of the companies stationed on board rather than actual crew.

Which is funny, because that list says that the Armory supplies crews for all of the vehicles, which adds up to around 400 Marines. Well more than the reserve companies could account for. And that's before the fluff added the rest of the Marine flyers and newer vehicles.

The numbers supplied for Space Marine chapters have never really added up. Though I agree that there's no reason for there to be too many Marines aboard their fleet vessels aside from those being transported as cargo. One or two senior officers, and then some well-trained Serfs to handle the other mundane duties. Space Marines are built to be just that, Marines. Not Space Mariners.

The Fist of Russ (Berek Thunderfists flagship) was captained by a mortal, him along with the crew were held in high regard by the Space Wolves.

I know they do not belong to a codex chapter, but in The Emperor's Gift, their ship is command by a human who was pulled from the Imperial Navy due to his great skill in void combat. Also, pretty much the rest of the crew was pulled into service for the Grey Knights, humans and servitors. I could wager that many Astartes ships are crewed in this fashion, maybe changing here and there depending on what chapter.

I also have to bet that any fleet based chapter is probably going to have a lot more marines commanding their ships and aboard at all times unless they are dropped planet side.

Remember that the Grey Knights are a special case - if they want something, they put in a call, and the Inquisition goes "dibs!" on their behalf.

But yes, most shipmasters are human. It's the same in the Horus Heresy era - a lot of the ships are captained by humans, even if the astartes stationed on them temporarily supersede their authority.

In Chris Wraight's battle of the Fang IIRC he writes about a SW Cruiser which had about 4 Space marines and the rest were chapter serfs. It also explored the uneasiness between the commander and his crew. Worth a read if you haven't picked it up already

 EmpNortonII wrote:

 Harriticus wrote:
A Battle Barge will probably have 50 or so Astartes and thousands of Chapter Serfs/Servitors.

A lot more than fifty. Maybe fifty in command, but there're a lot more to assault enemy ships via Thunderhawk or boarding torpedo... or teleporter if you're on, say, the Nicor.

This would have to be the case to make technical sense, but it isn't in fluff. A Space Marine Chapter only has 1,000 Astartes with a handful assigned to fleet duty.

Granted you could say that a Barge would have a Company or two in it that was being moved somewhere and these would act to buffer out the crew

Exactly. A company stationed on board a battle barge isn't part of the 'crew' in the same way that a carrier's air wing squadrons are seperate entities that could be deployed elsewhere.

It's implied that a lot of chapters 'assign' ships to companies - such that there's such a thing as "the second company's strike cruiser", but that strike cruiser will have serfs, servitors and a few dozen astartes on board. The only times it's expected to fight a naval battle, however, will be when it's deployed - at which time the second company's hundred space marines and three or four gunships will be on board it.

locarno24 wrote:
Exactly. A company stationed on board a battle barge isn't part of the 'crew' in the same way that a carrier's air wing squadrons are seperate entities that could be deployed elsewhere.

It's implied that a lot of chapters 'assign' ships to companies - such that there's such a thing as "the second company's strike cruiser", but that strike cruiser will have serfs, servitors and a few dozen astartes on board. The only times it's expected to fight a naval battle, however, will be when it's deployed - at which time the second company's hundred space marines and three or four gunships will be on board it.

Usually though the captain of the ship outranks the commander of the air wing. And on aircraft carriers there is usually an admiral in charge of the whole group.

Space Marine ships would have a different command structure where the company's commander outranks the ships captain. Space marines ships, battle barges and strike crusiers are there to serve the space marine troops rather than the air wing there to serve the Navy's purposes.

 Exergy wrote:
Space Marine ships would have a different command structure where the company's commander outranks the ships captain.

But most likely in an admiral sort of way. The marine commander isn't going to tell the ship captain how to do his job, he'll just tell him what that job is.

If i remember i read that most of the crew from the Imperial navy are press ganged from plants or as a punishment the officers hail from navel dynasties from generations of navel officer's.

In the military, sailors are trained before they are assigned to ships. This isn't true in the Imperium, where ships are their own self contained environments and crew up to warrant officers can be recruited and trained on a per-ship basis. The sector fleets do not have standing bodies of crew to provide to anyone, so they can't provide crews for marine chapters.

 Harriticus wrote:
A Battle Barge will probably have 50 or so Astartes and thousands of Chapter Serfs/Servitors.

"Usually, one of the Chapter's Captain will be appointed Master of the Fleet with overall responsibility for the Chapter's entire fleet... the Master of the Fleet also has a number of Space Marines under his command, who act as high-ranking officers aboard the fleet's vessels, providing captains for individual vessels, leading specialised boarding parties.

"The exact organization of those Space Marines tasked with crewing the fleet varies from Chapter to Chapter. In some cases, it will be the Master of the Fleet's own company who provide these Marines, with each of his veteran captains acting as captain to a different vessel within the fleet while their own squad members each man a different vital area within that same vessel. In other cases, squads from different companies within the Chapter may be charged with manning the fleet, serving under the command of the Master of the Fleet in just the same way as a Space Marine battleforce may be made up of squads drawn from several companies across the Chapter under the battle-command of a single, nominated force commander.

"At an absolute minimum, a Master of the Fleet typically needs eighty to a hundred Marines to properly crew the fleet, its Thunderhawks and its landing craft, and most Chapters have measures in place to ensure that a a standing force of this size is permanently available to the Master of the Fleet, be it his own company in its entirety, or squads from across the Chapter left permanently at his disposal." (Fanatic Magazine 6, p. 55)