Ship ramming has always been an efficient way to destroy ennemy ships and has been around since the dawn of naval warfare. However, in ancient times, the ships had a dedicated, steel part to actually ram the opponents, however in 1600's 1700's those parts had been removed, the usage of cannons made the ramming obsolete, because it's not a CQC technique, you can do it multiple time and it's easier to land a shot on an ennemy vessel than ramming. The ramming part of the vessel also became obsolete because of the vessels themselves. They were designed for high seas and ships had a certain type of hull to be able to navigate on them and this part did not help at all. Finnally, it got obsolete because in a high seas fight, you actually have an altitude to include in the equation, such a part could actually completely miss the ennemy while the top of the hull would hit it.

So did Captains rammed ennemy ships? Probably. Ramming remains a devastating tactic which can also can make a boarding party easily land on the ship and take out the crew. However, without the steel part on the front, your ship can be damaged, so ramming would be more used if you have a repair base near the battle. So ramming remained a situational technique, used only if you had a good opportunity, if your ship was larger and heavier than the other one and if you are able to repair it quickly...

1600s/1700s is a century or two before my area of expertise, but I can tell you that ramming was not completely dead as a naval tactic in the modern era; the world went through a weirdly trendy period in the mid19th century where naval ramming was the primary weapon of the day.

The primary reasons why ramming was uncommon in the age of sail are twofold: one, that sailing ships are difficult to maneuver precisely and with the speed you need to ram an enemy in combat and achieve real damage. Warships in the ancient Mediterranean might have cruised with sails, but they shipped the masts in combat and depended entirely on the speed and maneuverability of oar power.

Two, the advent of naval artillery made closing in to your enemy bow-first an almost suicidal proposition. The majority of your firepower would have been on your broadsides, and the ideal ramming position perpendicular to the enemy brings your unarmed bow directly into his biggest collection of weapons.

However, the age of the ironclad changed all that. Proper ironclads became suddenly almost impervious to contemporary naval guns, and steam powered, screw-driven warships suddenly had the speed and acceleration to ram effectively no matter the wind direction or speed. This was announced to the world with the perceived success of the ramming attack conducted by the CSS Virginia/Merrimack on the USS Cumberland in 1862. Cumberland sank rapidly, and Virginia shrugged off extensive shelling from other Union ships including the Union's own ironclad Monitor until withdrawing to avoid being trapped by the tide.

At the Battle of Lissa, in 1866, the Austrian ironclad SMS Erzherzog Ferdinand Max rammed the Italian ironclads Re d'Italia and Palestro to great effect, sinking the former in a matter of minutes during an age of naval warfare where ironclads could pound each other with shot for the length of an entire battle.

In the next several decades, many naval theorists around the world advocated for the new primacy of the ram, and many ironclads were built with rams, including the ill-fated CSS Manassas, the USS Dunderberg, and the HMS Anson. Navies around the world struggled to come up with new tactics to overthrow the centuries of broadside-centric, ship-of-the-line warfare they had practiced in favor of this new, confusing era of steam, iron, and ram.

However, this fad was overblown. Rams never again became a decisive weapon in major conflict, and in fact caused more harm than help. HMS Anson, listed above, was accidentally hit by the passenger liner SS Utopia while at anchor at Gibraltar, her ram tearing a five meter hole in the hull of the liner and sinking her in minutes with the loss of over five hundred lives.

And then, just as quickly as the cold march of technology had resurrected the ram from the mists of history, the cold march of technology consigned it to those mists once again. New high explosive shells, breech-loading large caliber guns, and the advent of the self-propelled torpedo made the ram obsolete again mere decades after it became popular.

Sources:

Roberts, William H. ""THUNDER MOUNTAIN" The Ironclad Ram "Dunderberg"." Warship International 30, no. 4 (1993): 363-400. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44889556.

Allen, Matthew. "The Deployment of Untried Technology: British Naval Tactics in the Ironclad Era." War in History 15, no. 3 (2008): 269-93. http://www.jstor.org/stable/26070629.