Boss Out of Town wrote:
That type of three-gun deck design was never used in an East Indiaman. A three-decker was an actual battleship, bullt soley by European governments, and, as I noted, would have towered over any pirate vessel. No pirate vessel got anywhere near a true man-of-war if it could avoid it.
(Riffing quickly here) Usually, no private company could afford fighting ships with more than one deck of guns. An actual trading ship would not even have that, and would instead have a few cannon in topside positions. As you note, they had to use that below-decks space for cargo.
Interestingly enough, explosions that could sink a warship were quite rare in sailing men-of-war. Something to do with the distribution of the powder magazines, I imagine. Nor were they easily sunk by gunfire. An uncontrolled fire could readily destroy a frigate or battlleship, but it could burn of these vessels to the waterline before it would sink. In naval battles, most ships "lost" were taken as prizes by the winning side.
Although if ever a company did exist that could, the British East India Company was
it (closely followed by the Congo Free State). However even when that title meant they were running the Indian sub-continent outright as a personal fief, they never went in for that sort of thing.
I think the 'magic cannon shot' happenned to a French 2nd-rater at Trafalger, but to be fair they had frenchmen for damage control (except for the ships that had spaniards for damage control, which manages to be even worse). (And yeah, funny thing about wooden ships; wood
floats).
Still even with the lead-impregnated curtains, it being the most heavily protected area on the ship, and 400-odd proffessional sailors being well drilled that it was the
worst thing that could happen, it was
possible for the powder-room to blow.
And the Flying Dutchman is the mythical avatar-submarine of death. If it could be done, the Flying Dutchman could do it.