The Powder Room
Cannons, powder and the rules that kept a wooden ship from blowing itself up.
A short film
From the archive. For every day.
Our house seal: an 1889 field gun and its pile of shot, ringed by the one rule every gun crew lived by. Keep your powder dry.
Naval history T-shirts from the powder room
A wooden warship kept its gunpowder in the magazine, low in the hull and behind a door no naked flame could pass. These five shirts take their pictures from the type specimen books printers bought in 1832 and 1889: the cannon on its carriage behind Loose Cannon, the powder horn on Keep Your Powder Dry, the monkey who stands in for the powder monkey and the skull and crossbones on the Powder Magazine door.
Printed from the 1800s to today, now on a heavyweight, garment-dyed Comfort Colors 1717 tee. The specimen book shows where every engraving came from.