The running rigging of a 74-gun ship, about 1805
Which rope does what, how it is led, and where it comes to hand. Read down the page: the drawing beside the text follows whichever line you are reading about, and the numbers on it match the numbered steps of the lead.
lead as Steel or Lever describe it position neither gives; my inference made fast block belayed belayed on the upper deck, a level below fitting not named in the sources
All the square sails at once. A dot means the line is fitted, a dash that the sources say it is not, a question mark that they disagree or are silent. Each sail name opens that sail in the lookup page, where any line of any sail can be traced on its own.
The spars are those of the 74 in David Steel’s tables of 1794: a large-class ship of 1,799 tons with a lower deck of 176 feet, a main yard of 97 feet and a main topsail yard of 70. Mast positions follow his rule. The heights of the decks above the water, and so of everything aloft, are my estimates and are good to a few feet, not to inches. The deck layout is taken from Admiralty draughts of the Bellona and Arrogant classes and Elephant (1786), stretched to Steel’s length.
The sails are set, the yards hoisted and square. Ropes that in life lie against the mast or along the yard are drawn a little apart so they can be told from one another. Rope sizes are circumferences, as the period measured them, and were read from a poor scan of Steel’s table.
The ship is rigged as of about 1805. Where Steel (1794) and Lever (1808) differ, both are given and the text says which the drawing follows. Lever is quoted from the 1819 text; the 1843 American edition that is easiest to find online was rewritten to later practice. The mizen is drawn with a standing gaff and a driver boom.