I would imagine the Spanish Armada, and a lot of naval wars, would have significantly less attrition.
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Until you lose half your fleet to a storm. Happened more than a few times, including to the Armada.
And dont fall into the trap of confusing loss of ships with loss of men.
The first world war had a huge problem with dissentary, trench foot, infections etc.
Though the OP still has not stated if we are talking deaths only, or loss of soldiers ability to fight due to disease etc.
If anything, IIRC navies tended to suffer even greater losses than land armies. (large number of men in cramped spaces with little sanitation and even worse food)
But casualties during naval battle usually more than make up for the higher attrition rate...
Not in the age of sail. It wasn't common for ships to be sunk - the armada lost only five ships in battle out of about 130, and only one ship was actually sunk at Trafalgar. Boarding actions and cannon fire would certainly kill, but not wipe out entire crews. Capture rates were usually higher. Almost as many French and Spanish sailors drowned during storms after capture at Trafalgar as were killed in the actual battle according to Wikipedia.
Things look very different come WWI when attritional losses were rare but a single shell or mine could blow the magazine and kill the entire crew.
Though one could say that the definition of attrition is not the same as the one which WWI generals were likely to use, i.e. wearing down the enemies' ability to fight and the will to do so through causing superior casualties over an extended period of time rather than victory through a single decisive battle. Basically the definition of attrition which is used by the OP is not the only one nor necessarily the best. Perhaps something like the number of deaths by non-violent means or somesuch might be better?
I think we learned in Europe history (I might be wrong) that it was the Crimean War.
Definitely not, the enemies of Russia suffered terrible losses from disease in that campaign. Almost 4:1 ratio of attrition vs. combat losses.
Others have noted it, but it's definately the opposite. Not only are ships fairly hard to sink but the vast majority of naval activity is non combat related even in a war. Bignaval battles with casualties greater than a few hundred are so rare that more or less every one of them is historically documented. Most ships and crewmen in a navy would spend most of even all of a war conducting a blockade, in a friendly port, escorting merchant ships, inspecting cargoes, levying trade taxes and tarrifs, escorting military transports, etc. Ships were often surrendered when they could no longer fight effectively but crew casualties might be very light. Boarding actions could be briefly bloody but one side or the other usually surrendered before casualties got high because it was obvious they were going to lose. Most sailors were perfectly willing to work for another side/country and captains were quick to hire on any captured sailers of any nationality religion, etc if they could do their jobs. Casualties in ships crews were usually so high that smart captains who planned ahead would keep extra cash off to the side for the purpose of paying signing bonuses for new crewmen. Every time they hit a new port they would be looking to hire on a few extra or replacement sailers to keep up with attrition.
By contrast the ways and odds of dying outside of combat are endless. The work of sailing a sailing ship in and of itself was one of the most dangerous occupations in the world at the time. You can fall out of rigging and hit the deck and die (or water and drown) get knocked overboard with no one noticing. Get injured while working with heavy equipment while exhausted with poor footing. Malnutrition, bad water and starvation were all major dangers. Dying in a storm (or just moderately bad weather) was common. Disease was not a big issue. Once a ship gets out to sea the sailers are isolated from the rest of society. Unless one of them has a really nasty communicable disease it's likely that infection will 'burn itself out' and that after a week or so at sea everyone will stay healthy.
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IIRC dysentery, typhus ("ship fever") and cholera were all commonplace in the Age of Sail, scurvy too of course. Wikipedia says that scurvy alone killed more British sailors than enemy action during the 18th century.
That's perfectly true... but only since the 16th century. Before that naval battles tended to be rare but extremely bloody.
Scurvy being a lack of nutrition rather than an infectious disease "helps" of course. I wouldn't be surprised if infectious diseases were less severe than for land forces at the same time for the reasons gagenater outlined - but still being severe compared to today, and only while at sea for long periods. One of the biggest problems facing the Spanish Armada was that it took so long to assemble in port that crews kept getting diseases or deserting, food stocks went off, repairs were needed, and so on and so on. Which of course meant it had to spend longer in port, exacerbating the problem.
Scurvy is a form of malnutrition - it's not a communicable disease. And I am not saying diseases never broke out at sea - just that it wasn't nearly as big a deal at sea as at land.
If anything large scale sea battles before that time period were even rarer than they were later, bloody as they were. I stand by my point - direct casualties in military naval action are not very high compared to other loss types.
But before the 16th century, naval operations in general were rare, not just naval battles. Fleets would be mostly limited to transporting some troops and supplies from point A to point B and would usually remain close to the coast. There were no elaborate blockades, no guerre de course, no high seas operations... Basically fleets would rarely leave ports and when they did it usually wasn't for too long so it makes sense that their wartime losses would remain low if no naval battles were fought.
Camarina, 255BC. 270 galleys, 100,000 dead. That's what the Roman fleet lost to a storm. Polybius describes it as the greatest naval disaster he knew of. And the Romans lost another fleet two years later in another storm. I don't think even Lepanto got close to those numbers of casualties. So yes, attrition could be more damaging than battle even before large ocean-going fleets were common.
Are those numbers supported by modern historians? It seems to have been a huge loss, but 100k seems like Herodotus territory to me.
A penteres would have 300 oarsmen, 40 sailors, 60-100 marines on each ship, so crews of around 400; and the size of fleets can be fairly reliably gauged from the size of the naval bases, some of which have been excavated to show 300 slips. I think there's enough evidence that it's a good figure, and I've certainly seen very few arguments that it's too many.