How many ropes were there on an 17th century sailing ship?

Answer 1

In Frank Worsley's First Voyage, he is asked this by his Bosun, and for the good ship Wairoa, which is shown as a three-masted square-rigged ship, the answers follow.

There were only 9 actually called 'ropes', (p.77), but in total there were some 240 halyards, tacks, sheets, buntlines, downhauls, outhauls, spilling-lines, leach-lines, clewlines, reef tackles, bowlines, guys and clewgarnets.

And a few more, and the Bosun finished his instruction tour with "Remember them for tomorrow."

The next day the Bosun conducted a tour but after the first four named correctly, the fifth in error earned Frank a hard slap with a rope end round the buttocks, which as he points out, at the end of the tour he still did not feel like sitting down.

This would have been about 1890. Frank is better known for his work on Shackleton's Endurance, and for his superb navigation of the 22 foot James Caird across some 800 miles of the Antarctic Ocean to Elephant island, and subsequently to South Georgia, where they walked for 36 hours across that island to raise a rescue.