Ship's officer with many sailors (8)
I believe the answer is:
matelots
'ship's officer' is the definition.
I don't know anything about this answer so I can't judge whether it can be defined by this definition.
'with many sailors' is the wordplay.
'with' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'many' becomes 'lot' (a lot of something).
'sailors' becomes 'mates' (mate is a kind of sailor).
'lot' going into 'mates' is 'MATELOTS'.
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