I am wondering about the ratings of the ship and the enlisted personnel of the army? I know that there were a lot of people who were basically criminals were pressed into service, and that discipline was brutal, but what about the navy? Were they mostly fishermen and dock workers?
The RN actually experimented with impressment for fishermen, but with limited success; the experience of fisherman in coasting boats or small boats was not necessarily immediately transferable to the navy. Fishermen were often, in fact, protected from impressment. Similarly, dockworkers were laborers, not necessarily sailors.
I've written on this topic a couple times before; these threads may be of some interest to you:
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2oo91z/during_the_age_of_sail_how_reliable_were/
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/29f3s7/how_does_the_royal_navys_organisation_command/
To quote myself:
There wasn't a satisfactory solution to the manning problem at any point during the period you mentioned. Impressment (the "press gangs" of lore) was a partial solution, but press gangs were often hated by local authorities and resisted, and had other problems besides (the most pertinent being the varied quality of those they impressed). One of the major problems the navy faced was how to encourage the growth of the seafaring classes (by making fishermen, colliers, and seamen involved in other trades) exempt from impressment, but those were often guided by political rather than necessarily logical interests.
The manning problem became more acute after the Dutch wars because the campaigns agains the Dutch were short and seasonal. The wars of the Spanish succession were fought over the course of several years, and the manning requirement was substantially larger due to that. The contemporary understanding of the problem assumed that there were enough seamen to fill all the needed spots in the navy and the issue was finding the men, but later research has proved that to be wrong -- no matter what, the navy would have to employ a substantial number of landmen to fill unskilled jobs. A major solution to the manpower problem was the revival of the Marine regiments, which were re-formed in 1702. The Marines were useful both as soldiers in landing expeditions (such as the capture of Gibraltar) and also as unskilled labor. Marine battalions were originally simply sailors embarked on ships, but the Royal Marines became a distinct service in 1755.
The French solution to their manning problem was its systeme des classes, a registration of seamen in coastal areas to serve 1 year out of every 3, but it was not a solution that would work in Britain with its strong tradition of "English liberty." Even a voluntary registration of seamen proposed in 1749 was denounced as tending to enslave Britons. So the press gang was seen as a lesser evil as long as it impressed only seamen. By the mid-1740s, the "Impress Service" covered most of England, but it was more efficient in some localities than others due to varying degrees of resistance from local authorities.
The flip side of the manning problem was managing desertion, which was most often a problem when men were not long-term members of a settled ship's company or when men who were were transferred to a new (unfamiliar) ship without their consent. In those cases, they most often deserted back to their old ship and officers.
As a consequence of the extended wars of the early 18th century, the Navy had more men under arms than ever before. Impressment and transfers of men from one ship to another also inevitably threatened the social contract under which most ships worked. This then led to more strain on the administrative structures of the navy, and the Admiralty released a set of Regulations and Instructions relating to his Majesty's Service at Sea in 1731. Many of the regulations dealt with accounting aboard ships (relating to public money and public stores), but they also regulated the daily routine of ships, from cleaning to cooking to discouraging blasphemy. This had the long-term effect of making more similar what men could expect from ships' companies across the Navy.
A major innovation during the Seven Years' War (1754-63) was the creation of the divisional system, which was popularized (and maybe invented by) Vice-Admiral Thomas Smith. The system divided a ship's company into divisions allocated to lieutenants and warrant officers, who would be directly responsible for the men under their command. This had the effect of making sure that even in the largest ships, men would be known to at least one officer. That relationship was crucial in creating humane relations that were essential to discipline.
I guess as a bit of an answer is this Timewatchers documentary on the Royal Navy under Admiral Nelson.