cleaning bores of naval cannon

[Modern Art]

I was always wondering how they swabbed the bores of BP naval cannon aboard ship. The corrosive effect of BP in the salt air is bad enough, let alone swabbing the bores with sea water. I can't believe they'd use precious drinking water for such things.

So how the heck did they keep the bores from pitting?

[Will Bison]

Depending on the period in history, a certain amount of fresh water was reserved for cleaning bores. Swabing could be done with salt water. Final cleaning was done with fresh water followed by lubrication.

Keep in mind that missions were short and the use of cannon limited. Life at sea with any Navy was mostly boredom.

[Rickk]

Black Bart took 400 or so ships in his 2 year career. His ship probably didn't rate too high on the "Bordom Scale" :-)

Of course, he probably wan't to concerned with excessive corosion due to BP fouling, as he no doubt could "swap out" guns on a regular basis as required :-).

[Cannoneer]

                 
       In the era your asking about, men at sea didn't drink water, they were given a ration of beer and grog per day. Fresh water that isn't kept air tight doesn't remain potable for very long. I read somewhere that sailors on the Mary Rose, which was from the Tudor period in England, were rationed a gallon of beer per man a day. If the beer was brewed well it would remain good for about a year. They also didn't waste fresh water on bathing, having the commom knowledge of the time that bathing was bad for your health. They would never have used salt water at any time on their guns. Sponging after firing and the cleaning of the bore would all be done with fresh water that they had in storage on the ship. After the bore was dried they would swab it with tallow to preserve it. When not in use the guns would be sealed at the muzzle with a tampion and a lead or leather cover attached to straps would be placed over the vent to prevent any sea mist from getting inside the bore.

[Rickk]

The running out of beer is why the pilgrims landed at Plymoth Rock instead of farther south. They would have been quite a bit happier come January if they landed where the weather is warmer.

The beer style known as IPA (India Pale Ale) was brewed with higher amounts of hops. Hops contain substances which are natural preservatives.  The extra hops added to beer taken on long trips to India allowed the beer to not go bad for a longer period of time. This was of course in the days "pre-frigidare", so there were no cold storage facilities on-board.

A couple of hundred years ago the strains of yeasts in use were not very well developed, and they did not have a very high tolerance for alcohol. The yeast would go dormant with only a few percent alcohol in it, meaning that they wern't getting totally sloshed drinking the beer in place of water.

Due to the low alcohol tolerance yeast strains of the time there were considerable amounts of unfermented sugar in the beer, giving it nutritional properties. Thank Lewis Pastueur (the guy who invernted the pasturization process) for also developing a strain of yeast that can tolerate alcohol levels up to about 17%.