The Pirates of the Burning Sea Community web site has posted the second part of their interview with Flying Lab Software. The article is a great read and answers a lot of good questions about the game. It also features a few great new screen shots. Here is a bit from the interview:
Community: As a Captain of your ship, you will be able to hire your own crew. How will hiring and firing crew be handled? Will we have to select each crew member, or do we hire them by groups? And what about the officers?
FLS Design Staff: Crew are generic and have no stats other than their current health status that I described earlier. You just have a certain number of them, and you pretty much hire them in bulk. Officers are unique and you hire them individually. Their mix of skills affect what you can do with your ship.
You can check out the full article at this link.