A merchant vessel deprived of every sailor could not sail, dock safely, or protect the people still aboard. Emptying complete crews therefore made little practical sense, especially when the state depended on merchant shipping as well as naval vessels. Removing every sailor from a foreign merchant ship would leave the same problem of getting the vessel to port. Naval parties did take individual seamen from merchant crews, where experienced sailors were easy to find. Those seizures need to be distinguished from a claim that whole crews were routinely removed.
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Why the Navy could not empty a merchant crew
Naval parties did not routinely strip whole merchant crews, because doing so would leave a ship helpless and damage the wider maritime economy.