It's hard to compare wages and work directly. I suppose like any job, so much depends on whether a person actually enjoy what they are doing, how much they are willing to trade off for more money etc.
When a ship is at sea, the number of hours worked in a day varies, depending on the person's occupation. Some folks are "day workers", some are shiftworkers (we call a shift a "watch"); having said that day-workers also have other duties. A typical day at sea would probably find a person working 12 hours a day (on average); some days more, some days a little less. Depending on what the ship is doing it may be 12-16 hours per day on average. Being posted to a ship a person gets an extra allowance (sea duty allowance) which is supposed to compensate people for the hardship and extra work. For a junior person it's about $290/month before tax.
When a ship is in a port, home or foreign a person has to perform, in addition to their daily work, a 24-hour duty watch (not working for 24 hours, but required on board the ship in case of emergencies such as fires, etc.). Depending on the person's rank these duty watches may be as frequently as every five in-port days, or as far apart as every 20 (or more) as a person gets more senior. The duty watch is not hard work, rather just a "pain in the butt".
How to equate the pay? On the DND recruiting site you can find the salaries. Using the lowest scale, a person gets promoted to Leading Seaman (a working level rank for NCM) after 3 years, and it's about $49000. If you were to compare it to a 37.5 hour work week (the federal civil service week), it's about $25/hr. At sea, the running joke is that it is about $4/hr.
This is all at the most junior working rank, as a person progresses the salary ranges go up quite significantly http://www.recruiting.forces.gc.ca/media/pdf/other/RegularForcePay.pdf
There are also some postings to shore units, and those jobs are generally a traditional work week, with the occasional base duty-watch, once every month or so (again, depending on rank, more senior people might do it once every four, five or six months).
Some of the other benefits: 4 weeks of vacation from the get-go, increasing to 5 weeks after 5 years. When a ship is deployed for overseas, there are special vacation days that a person gets that don't come from regular vacation, so for example a person might get 20 days off, then still have the 20 days of regular time off to take as well. Full medical and dental, medical/dental plans for family etc.
So, it comes back to the opening comment about how much a person is willing to put up with in their job. The work really isn't that hard, I find there are a lot of whiners, but I think that some whining is justified (the system has some cracks), but it really isn't as bad as some might say. Personally, there is a great deal that I enjoy, and some things I think are plain stupid; I spent six years in the Navy, found it just wasn't doing it for me so I left to go to University, afterwards I got back in full-time for seven years, now I have taken some time off for more university. Next year I might have a civilian job (to try something new) or get back into the game full-time.
Overall, not a bad life, but is open to some very extended periods away from family/home, and that is usually the deal breaker for most jobs, military or civilian (a friend of mine is an auditor with Revenue Canada, and he travels quite a bit; the question he asks is whether the salary he gets, which is pretty good, is worth the time away he spends from his family as he chases tax cheats).
