Lately, upon re-watching this movie, I am struck by how many crew members they have assigned to the USS Reluctant, which is essentially a rather small supply ship. Maybe that's the way they did things back in WWII, but today the Navy keeps ships more sparsely staffed. Obviously, technology has been the cause of a lot of that personnel reduction, but still, the USS Reluctant as depicted in this movie seemed way over-staffed.
Can't help but agree with you. How a boat like that could have a Doctor instead of a Medic is beyond me
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Those types of vessels specifically had a crew of 26-30 people (some listed on NavSource with as many as 46) which is not hard to believe. The Navy mans the hell out of vessels in order to have on hand extra personnel for damage control and navigation/vessel ops in the event of a casualty.
The S.S. Mormacyork (a Moore-McCormack Lines C-3 break bulk ship) operated commercially with a crew of roughly 45 men until taken over by the U.S. Navy in 1941 and converted to the USS Anne Arundel. Throughout the war it operated moving military cargo with a crew of 390 enlisted and 39 officers.
You also need to take into account that in general these are very old stick/boom ships with lots of deck machinery/winches and wires/roller bearing wire blocks that need constant maintenance. Even into the early 1990s the last of the old Lykes Lines stick ships (and any others still in service for the emergency breakout of the First Gulf War) had very large crews to keep up with all the maintenance needed to keep those babies running.