Fuse or not?

[tenngun]

Anybody that shoots a cannon barefoot is nuts!

Sailors were often bare foot as historic shoes use melting ice as soles. Part of ‘clearing for action’ was throwing sand on the decks for good footing.

 

[Celticstoneman]

I keep wondering what a BM means and I always come back to bowel movement.

Well Dave boy, with your comment about Bosn's Mates in mind ,Dave boy sounds like a denizen of an alternative whore house. Is that true of you? I was a BM in the United States Navy for four years and will not hear you speak ill of that service or those years!

 

[nightwolf1974]

The gun kit normally used bag, and shooters do today. But of old gun did have a spoon. Loose powder was loaded with the bottom down, then turned over when the loader hit the breech. When the wad was run down the rammer tapper it hard compressing it.....

That's how I've always done it.

 

[zulu]

That's how I've always done it.

 

[SOLANCO]

Anybody that shoots a cannon barefoot is nuts!

I suspect Jack Tar was barefoot a lot of the time. And I doubt there were steel toed shoes then. Period shoes don't look like much protection at all.

 

[Celticstoneman]

Do any of you fellas know what "A Son-Of-A -Gun" really means?

 

[tenngun]

Do any of you fellas know what "A Son-Of-A -Gun" really means?

Multi definitions
Woman did go to sea with their men. And women had kids onboard. While birthing a gun could be fired off, hoping it eased the labor
While in port ‘ships wives’ would come aboard when the ship was ‘out of discipline’. Blankets could be rigged tween guns giving a couple a bit of privacy. As these wives were often prostitutes and birth control not very effective children were conceived, and since ‘fatherless’ they were sons of guns.
Midshipman were bent over a gun and whacked for punishment. As they were in a position that resembled sex children born near that gun were sons of a gun