Gunlocks
Before the middle of the 18th century, the guns aboard a ship were lit with the help of a match. This was naturally a source of danger and so there were also accidents where these matches lit fires. Therefore, the admiralty considered another possibility and so it was decided to install the flintlock system.
A typical gunlock from 1820 (x)
This was safer and the Gun Captain only had to pull a lanyard to fire the gun. This initially caused the locks to be improperly fastened and they flew out of the gun in action. In addition, the captains thought that their guns would not fire in time and thus have a weakness against their opponents. This changed slowly from the 1770s where the gunlocks were installed reasonably the safety and this sure that these locks the guns fired much better and faster, from then on these locks became standard.
