Wilkommen sum Subsim Herr Kaluen!
1. Depending on the mods you use you should be looking for a cover that says either merchants or Handelschiff.
2. It means they are fatigued poor dears. Put them to bed for eight hours gamte time or so and they should be right as rain. Welcome to fatigue management. Personally I use SH3Commander to turn fatigue off as I'm a skipper not an NCO and don't have the luxury of an easy to use rostering system. Some people love playing "Sims" with their sailors some don't. It is worth learning to use the fatigue management so you can decided what you want to do.
Check out the newbie thread and the community manual which covers most of this sort of thing.
http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=96026
Gute Jagd!