Barrel boom
A wooden barrel of gunpowder is a familiar sight in many historical movies, but were they really used? Wooden barrels were surely made to hold liquids. A dry barrel shrinks and the gaps between the staves open up. To store gunpowder the barrels would have to be dry, so wouldn鈥檛 a barrel leak powder?
鈥� Coopers have always been divided into 鈥渨et鈥� and 鈥渄ry鈥� coopers, the former being considered more skilled for obvious reasons. Below is a quote from The Cooper and his Trade by Kenneth Kilby (W & J Mackay Limited, 1971).
鈥淐asks were a relatively cheap and strong means of packaging, and quite easily moved about, a tremendous advantage in times when everything was manhandled between horse and cart and boat. It is therefore understandable that there were few commodities not shipped in casks of some sort or other. The dry cooper, the least skilled if not the least proud, was responsible for making most of these casks, which served such a wide variety of commodities.
Advertisement
The most skilled of the dry coopers were those who made the tight casks which were capable of holding liquid, the work being called dry-tight coopering. In this group were the soap, butter, gunpowder, herring and other fish-cask makers.
The principles involved in dry coopering are basically the same as those in any other branch of coopering, but the work differs considerably, mainly because the timber used is cheap, mostly soft and often second-hand, and the work is not so demanding as in other types of coopering, the goods held are not needing such expert packaging, and the casks are made to last one journey only鈥any of the cheaper casks were lined with paper sacks.鈥�
This answers part of your correspondent鈥檚 question. The other part is that the cooper would know his cask was for dry goods, and so the cask would be designed and made to be tight when dry. However, climate would obviously play a part, because the gunpowder might have to be transported in very humid areas such as South-East Asia or in very dry places such as the Arabian peninsula. Here, the internal paper sack mentioned by Kilby would play its part. This was probably made of a heavy paper similar to cartridge paper.
The powder itself clearly had to be kept dry, and the powder casks would have been kept in the driest possible conditions in the ship鈥檚 magazine. In the ship鈥檚 magazine, the powder would be transferred to silk bags to form charges for the guns, and these bags would have been carried to the gun decks by the boys employed as 鈥減owder monkeys鈥�.
That is the long answer, of course. The short answer is yes, they did carry gunpowder in barrels. The casks might open up a bit and leak in very dry conditions, and the answer to this problem was an internal paper sack.
Adrian Carroll
Clerk, The Worshipful Company of Coopers
London, UK
鈥� Wooden barrels were, until recently, the most common container for gunpowder. They didn鈥檛 leak powder from gaps between the staves because the barrels were made tight enough to hold liquids.
Nowadays we see mainly alcoholic beverage barrels but until the early 20th century, barrels for dry materials such as flour, sugar, crackers and, of course, gunpowder, were as ubiquitous as cardboard boxes are today.
Cooperage for solids was different from cooperage for liquids. Most slack (dry) cooperage was held tight by reeds used to fill any gaps between the staves, or by using paper linings. Tight (wet) cooperage was swollen with water prior to use in order to close the gaps between the staves, and never allowed dried out thereafter.
Slack cooperage was made not only of oak, the most common wood for tight cooperage, but also of 鈥渨hite鈥� woods such as sycamore and willow, which are cheaper. In addition, white woods do not impart an undesirable flavour and smell to flour and other dry materials in the way oak does.
Gunpowder barrels were made of oak by a tight cooper and were actually good enough to hold liquid. The hoops surrounding the staves were of copper and wood, which are non-sparking, never of iron or steel. Standard full barrels contained 100 pounds of gunpowder, half barrels 50 pounds, and so on down to 2-pound barrels for sportsmen. When filling the barrels, space would be left to allow the powder to move freely. Regularly rotating the barrels would then prevent the powder from aggregating during storage.
If you want to have a really authentic Guy Fawkes re-enactment you can buy empty replica gunpowder barrels from Skinners Cooperage of Bootle, Merseyside, UK. The company website has a picture of copper and wood-hooped gunpowder barrels ().
Ross Firestone
Winnetka, Illinois, US
This week鈥檚 questions
Dunking dumplings
Whenever I am preparing Italian potato dumplings, or gnocchi, I notice that they behave strangely. When I put the frozen gnocchi into lightly salted boiling water, they immediately sink to the bottom. But the main ingredient of frozen gnocchi is frozen water, whose density is about 0.92 kilograms per litre, and the density of boiling water is 0.97 kilograms per litre, so shouldn鈥檛 the gnocchi stay afloat until the ice melts and then sink to the bottom? Instead, they rise to the surface after two minutes and all float when cooked, when they should be heavier than water. What is going on?
Radko Istenic
Ljubljana, Slovenia
Flight of the bumble balloon
When you blow up a balloon, and release it without tying up the end, it flies around in a circular path. I understand why it flies, but what causes it to zoom spirally?
Zachary Vernon
Toronto, Canada
Put that light out
If the sun was extinguished or there was a permanent worldwide eclipse, how long would it take for us all to freeze to death, and what could we do to try to avoid it?