I agree completely: crew figures not only add life to a ship model, but help enormously in establishing the scale of it. I'm pleasantly surprised that Revell was decent enough to send you so many.
Revell made a few other ship kits with figures on that scale: the
Cutty Sark, Thermopylae, Alabama, Kearsarge (20 figures each),
Golden Hind (five figures), and a thing they call a "Spanish Galleon" that isn't really a scale model but has some nice figures. The figure sets in the
Cutty Sark, Thermopylae, Alabama, and
Kearsarge are identical - but different from those in the
Constitution. They're intended to have a mid-nineteenth-century air to them. The officers probably wouldn't work, but the sailors look about right. Four out of the five in the
Golden Hind kit would work fine; the other represents Sir Francis Drake, complete with helmet and breast plate. I think the "Spanish Galleon" uses the same ones, but I'm not sure. (It's one of my un-favorite kits; I've never built it.)
All those kits - if you can find them - are likely to be expensive; I wouldn't recommend buying any of them at the typical price just for the figures. But you might be able to scrounge the figures off a damaged old one, or something like that. Or, since you had such good luck with the Revell customer service folks once, maybe you could talk them into sending you a set of
Cutty Sark figures.
Another source is the HO railroad department. HO scale is actually a little bigger than 1/96 (1/87, to be specific), but human beings vary in height - as do manufacturers' perceptions thereof. I particularly like the figures made by a German company called Preiser.
Preiser figures come in two forms: sets of five or six, pre-painted (pretty expensive) and boxes of forty or fifty unpainted (terrific bargains). Most of them obviously are intended for use on railroad layouts, but careful inspection will yield quite a few in generic working dress who work just as well on ship models. And a little ingenuity can produce some simple conversions. A guy using a pick can be turned into a sailor swabbing the deck, and a little careful work with an Xacto knife can turn a German policeman into an American naval officer. (Try Milliput for making things like hats and coattails, and for modifying limbs.) The heights of Preiser figures vary somewhat; you'll find that some scale out to less than six feet tall on 1/96 scale.
Some years back Preiser did make a couple of small boxes of figures (the expensive, pre-painted variety) designed for sailing ship models. They weren't bad, but they looked like they'd be more at home under Captain Hook than Isaac Hull.
Another good company is the American firm Woodland Scenics. It's come on the scene fairly recently with a large number of figures. They're prepainted (a bit better than the Preiser ones), and come in sets of four or five, usually with some specific theme - dock workers, baseball players, railroad crew, etc. Again, you have to look carefully and be willing to do a little conversion work, but quite a few Woodland Scenics folks could be pressed into the navy.
A good website for studying what's available in the way of HO figures is Walthers: www.walthers.com. It's a huge mail order operation, with, as I understand it, a pretty good reputation for service.
Hope this helps a little. Good luck.