What’s in a barrel?

[Sizzolo]

Hello all. 
I’m currently making a few leagers (barrels) and am interested to know if anyone knows how/if barrels were labeled or marked to make it easy to find and pull a required provision? (Exact period;1805, in the belly of an English frigate or higher rated ship). 

 

I imagine it’d be frowned upon for sailors to open one and do a sniff test. Equally it could create errors if someone has to refer to a storage chart to select barrels from the correct zone due to potential of things being shifted about when digging around. Perhaps barrels were tagged with chalk or paint mark somewhere that would be visible when in storage? Likely a more permanent marking was common as I’d hate to fill a barrel with 150 gallons of water that was previously storing dried fish! (Or Nelson allegedly!). 
 

Wishing you all a reflective and peaceful Remembrance / Veterans Day. 

[wefalck]

I believe barrels were branded with references. Otherwise, the stowage plan would tell where to find what.

[Sizzolo]

Cheers: I hadn’t thought about branding - makes sense. Maybe some kind of coded branding iron motif. I guess on the ends rather than the sides because unless you continue the pattern around the full circumference there’s a chance the mark would be hidden. 

[CPDDET]

20 hours ago, Sizzolo said:

Cheers: I hadn’t thought about branding - makes sense. Maybe some kind of coded branding iron motif. I guess on the ends rather than the sides because unless you continue the pattern around the full circumference there’s a chance the mark would be hidden. 

I would also think that branding on the side would "dedicate" that barrel for certain uses. Whereas the top of a branded barrel could be easily changed so the barrel could be reused for different items.

[Snug Harbor Johnny]

  What can you put in a barrel and make it lighter? ...  Holes  😉 

[Thukydides]

As others have said I would guess the tops as they could easily be replaced and thus the barrels reused. There are lots of references in the captains logs I have been reading to empty barrels being returned to the victualling ship.

 

In terms of what was on the label again I can only speculate, but there are some clues in the logs. Take for example the following entry:

Quote

Moderate & clear, employed about the rigging. Received 16 leagers fresh beef opened cask pork N 212 contained 160 [?].

 

It appears to me that captains were held responsible for the amount of stores they consumed as a significant portion of the logs are spent detailing what was opened when and how much it contained. From the above example we can see that here was likely some sort of reference number on the barrel (in this case N 212). I assume N refers to No or Number, but it is not clear if the N would have been included or just the number. Also it seems likely to me that there was some indication of much the barrel contained (in this case pork). The reason I suspect this is pretty much every time a food barrel was opened, he details how much was in it.

 

I have tonnes of examples like these I could show you if you wanted to see them.

 

In summary I would say if the barrel in question contained food, I would expect a label on the lid with a number (e.g. N212), the product in question (e.g. salt pork), and the amount of the product contained within.

 

One final note is that it only seems to be the meat that was catalogued in such detail. The logs are much more vague with regard to other commodities being consumed though they do carefully not the number and types of barrels brought on board.

[cotrecerf]

I just found this: https://www.trinitymarine.co.uk/shop/original-18th-century-ships-salted-beef-barrel/

 

So there seems to not only having existed the One type of barrels )except for size of course) but various forms and technical executions depending on their contents. 

 

 

[wefalck]

Of course, there were different types and shapes of barrels for different purposes.

 

The barrel shown, however, is not for storing meat in the hold, but for dispensing meat on a daily basis. Meat barrels would be periodically retrieved from the hold, opened and their content distributed to several of such casks. Each bench would collect their daily ration, put it into a net with their identification mark attached and then hand it over to the cook.

[Sizzolo]

Fantastic info everyone! Thank you all v much. 

[wefalck]

By coincidence, I was writing a journal review for the German LOGBUCH of SKYLLIS no. 23 (http://www.deguwa.org) and there is an article on how one can conclude from the type of barrel used in 17th century Netherlands: Oosterbaan, J. (2023): Identifying Content through Casks.- SKYLLIS, 23: 103-116.

 

It seems that the Dutch guilds of coopers had gauges for each type of barrel and these gauges have been preserved in museums. The author focused on trade barrels for herring and beer.

 

 

 

[aliluke]

On a similar matter...if I was a 19th century cargo ship carrying barrels as cargo would I carry barrels vertically in the hold or lie them on their sides? I'm building a trabaccolo and want to populate the hold with a cargo of barrels.

[wefalck]

I suppose this depends on the circumstances: would it be full load or only a few barrels, how long would the trip be and in what kind of waters? Stowing barrels horizontally would almost certainly a better use of the space and safer on longer trips. The barrels would be wedged in place. It also depends on the size of the barrels and how many crew would be there to man-handle them. 

 

On the other hand, shipping a few barrels from one port to another in reasonable weather conditions may not require a lot of stowage effort.

 

Turning over barrels from vertical to horizontal may be quite an effort, depending on their size. There are different techniques for getting barrels in and out of a ship, depending on the availability of loading equipment. Cranes were not very common in small Mediterranean ports, I think. In addition, a fee would be due for their use. A classical method for getting a barrel out of a hold and onto a quay would be with the aid of two ropes that are fastened on the quay at a distance a bit less than the length of the barrel; the rope would be then taken around the barrel and several men would pull on the ropes, effectively rolling the barrel out of the hold and up to the quay. A plank could be used to aid this process. If there was a crane or one could use the ship's boom, the drum would be attached either vertically with a drum-sling or horizontally with two griping hooks.

[popeye2sea]

google parbuckle for a quick how to.

 

Regards,

Henry

[Sizzolo]

9 hours ago, aliluke said:

vertically in the hold or lie them on their side

Purely from a physics perspective, vertically stored barrels can ‘fall over’ whereas horizontal will just roll/pivot if there’s room to move. Most importantly though in the design of barrels: they really neatly lock together when on their sides as the narrow ends align with the widest point (middle) of adjacent rows. I’ll try and add a pic later which demonstrates this. 

[wefalck]

'Just' rolling barrels at sea would be a major hazard ... all loads have to be securely fastened by wedging them in place, regardless whether they are stored upright or horizontal. 

[aliluke]

Thanks.

Didn't mean to hijack this topic but it all pertains.

[cotrecerf]

Just to give an idea of stowing barrels in the 18th century...... (af Chapman drawing)

[Sizzolo]

Thanks for all the help everyone. 

[Thukydides]

I like it. Very nice.