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• Rules

As observed from the gun deck.

1. Bulkheads down
2. Fearnought screens suspended over the hatchways (thru which gunpowder is handed).
3. Fires out.
4. All Captain’s ducks and geese in the coops
5. All doctor’s saws, knives, probes, and bandages laid to order in the cockpit.
6. Clean sweep of the fore and aft of the main deck.
7. “Silence!”; every man and boy is mute at his station.
8. Shot racks ranged.
9. “Cast loose the guns!”; breechings cast loose.
10. “Take out your tompions!”; wooden plugs blocking the muzzles are removed.
11. “Run out your guns!”; gun tackles coiled down.

1. “Prime!” cartridge pierced with a priming wire down the vent and pan filled with priming powder from the powder horn (or priming tubes).
2. “Point your guns!” gun captain calls out elevation & carriage position, the coin is adjusted to the correct elevation and the handspike men adjust the carriage.
3. “Load with cartridge!” a new cartridge is placed in the muzzle followed by a wad (hay, straw, oakum, and/or yarn) and then they are both rammed down until the cartridge reaches the priming wire at which time the gun captain yells “Home!”.
4. “Shot your guns!” a shot and wad are placed in the muzzle.
5. “Ram home shot and wad!” the shot and wad is rammed down to the cartridges and given two (2) extra strokes from the rammer.
6. “Fire!”; a slow match is lit and placed on the priming powder (or if using locks the lanyard is jerked by the gun captain).

A thousand pounds of iron is rained from the 23 sulphur fountains, round shot, grape and canister, all hissing and banging together; the huge bulk recoils and every mast, rib, and beam in her quakes in the thundering weight of blow she has given, and the next instant what a horrible confusion of screech and howl rises above the cannon’s bellowing! It is frightful...two minutes since all was quiet and death-like now such yelling, hurraing, hallooing, leaping, tugging, clattering of ropes and grumbling of blocks as if all the tenants of the lower regions, black from the smoke, had broken loose and gone mad...

“Don’t give up the ship!” Capt John Lawrence, 1813

“Worm and sponge!”; sponge is rammed down the barrel and twisted to extinguish any burning gunpowder, cool the barrel and remove and debris in preparation of the next round of shot.

1. “Cease fire!”
2. “Put in your tompions!”
3. “House your guns!”

And after the guns came a profound silence broken only by the groans of the wounded. Then the full horror of the fight was revealed; “The surgeon and his mate were smeared with blood from head to foot; they looked more like butchers than doctors...”

Combined extraction from the writings of Catain Marryat and Falconer’s Marine Dictionary 1769

“We have met the enemy and they are ours...” Oliver Hazard Perry, 1813

• Read more about Commodore Perry.
• The Naval War of 1812, by Theodore Roosevelt
• "Guns at Sea", Peter Padfield, 1974
• Notes on Sailing Warships (including definition of terms)

“The art of gunnery is an ageeable entertainment to a curious mind...” John Gray, 1731

• Scenario #1: The Battle of Lake Champlain
• ShipYard