Watching the latest episode of Hornblower, which is of course, set in JA's time, one of the ship's crew gets threatened with being hung, as hitting a superior officer is punishable by death.

I was surprised - were the naval punishments of JA's time really that severe? Apart from death or being "placed in irons", if a sailor misbehaved, depending of course on what he did, what other punishments could he expect?

Also someone (not going to spoil who!) gets promoted to post captain - pray, what sort of rank is a post capatin, what does he do and why is it named as such?