Teleporting with multi-attended objects - and what constitutes attending?

[jmax]

Teleport (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/teleport.htm) says you can bring along objects up to your maximum load. It also says that attended objects get a saving throw. What if an object can be reasonably considered to be attended by multiple creatures? What level of engagement is necessary for an object to be considered attended?

Let's say I want to steal a ship. A big ship. I'm a 20th-level druid. I have shapechange boosted to caster level 25 (Bead of Karma, orange ioun stone), Natural Spell, stormwalk*, bite of the werebear, and aura of vitality, which collectively let me teleport about 3.7 million pounds [citation - my shapechange handbook (https://docs.google.com/document/d/127el4KqlL2ALu1chZ9WLPGFOu1InVTJ2pmxAmYAARbE/edit?ts=59f7dabb#bookmark=id.1mracip0jgxs)] of touched objects, which is enough to nab an old-school heavy frigate (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Constellation_(1797)). (Alas, I can't quite manage a 44-gun frigate or ship of the line without blowing a crap-ton of gold on a Manual of Gainful Exercise +4, although after enough of this kind of piracy I'll surely be able to afford one!**)

The ship, of course, has a large crew. Probably at least dozens of men. But since I'm a savvy thief, I'm pulling off my heist at night. Most of the crew is asleep belowdecks. Let's say it's a calm night, and only a half-dozen men are awake, only one of which is actually actively controlling the ship. (At this point I'm expecting someone with incredibly detailed knowledge of historical seafaring to tell me exactly how many crew would be awake in exactly what roles on a calm night for a 36-gun frigate, but for now let's assume 6 active crew, of which one is steering.)

So we have dozens men sleeping in hammocks on the ship, a half-dozen on watch, and one actually steering. This leaves a number of questions:

1) For which of those sailors does the ship count as an attended object?
2) If it's more than one, does the ship get a save for each of them, or just a single save at the best modifier?
3) Presumably, however many saves we grant, only one success is necessary to prevent the teleportation - correct?
4) Let's say that, however many saving throws there are, they all fail, and I successfully teleport the ship. What happens to the crew? I'm not actually touching the crew, so do they come along because they're supported by the object? Do I bring a random 12 because that's how many medium creatures I can bring with the spell? Do I get to pick a specific 12? Or does the whole crew simply fall into the sea?

All serious opinions welcome - I'm pretty sure we're beyond the scope of what the rules specify.

*Assume, for the sake of framing the problem properly, that you use the interpretation that stormwalk causes the local thunderstorm rather than requiring there to be one already. Teleport or greater teleport removes the need to discuss this, but for now I want to stick to something you can do as a vanilla druid without any special build requirements.
**Actually, you can totally nab a ship of the line if you take Reserves of Strength and use shapechange to become a Garngrath and further enhance with the same spells. Nightcrawler is better able to distribute its weight across the ship to avoid sinking it though.

[Firest Kathon]

Merely touching the ship seems to be enough to constitute "attended". From the rules for Damaging Objects (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/equipment/damaging-objects/):

An item attended by a character (being grasped, touched, or worn) [...]

To answer your questions:


All of them, I would rule that the hammocks are part of the ship
One save with the best modifier
yes
I would say the crew is not teleported, as they are not targeted by the spell *splash*

[jmax]

Merely touching the ship seems to be enough to constitute "attended". From the rules for Damaging Objects (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/equipment/damaging-objects/):


To answer your questions:


All of them, I would rule that the hammocks are part of the ship
One save with the best modifier
yes
I would say the crew is not teleported, as they are not targeted by the spell *splash*


Overall I like this answer - thank you! And thank you in particular for the citation. EDIT: 3.5 citation for the same thing (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/exploration.htm#savingThrows)

It does invite an additional question, though: If merely touching is sufficient, what is the minimal definition of creature? If there's a fly in my ointment, and I try to teleport the ointment, does the ointment get a saving throw with the fly's modifier? And, if that save fails (which it probably will), is the fly left behind?

Depending on the answers to those questions, one could plausibly rid a ship of vermin:roach: entirely by teleporting it a few hundred feet. This could be a very effective way to decontaminate ships and prevent the proliferation of invasive species - which might be by itself sufficient motivation for a 20th-level druid to do this as a free service for intercontinental voyages.

Of course, if a fly qualifies as a creature, where do you draw the line? At a minimum, I think we have to treat plants and microorganisms as objects to avoid insanity. Otherwise teleporting someone would kill them by leaving behind all their gut bacteria. (Further, one in 20 teleports would cause the contents one's... stomach... to remain behind.)