Hook had a grin on his face as the students assembled in the danger shop, in the normal simulated pirate ship setting.

"All right now, everyone follow me," he declared, as he led the class below the main deck down to the gun deck. "Today, hopefully we'll all be able to say 'We sunk their battleship.'" He punctuated that with a laugh.

"The cannon are not easy to fire, oh no. Someone has to be the powder monkey and haul up powder from where it is stored up to here on the gun deck. A wet swab is then used to mop out the interior of the barrel, extinguishing any embers from a previous firing which might cause the next charge of gunpowder to go off prematurely." He smirked. "Believe me, going off prematurely here will be very, very unfortunate." He cleared his throat.

"Gunpowder, is then placed in the barrel, followed by a cloth wad, and then rammed home with the rammer." He gestured at the various implements as he went. "Next the cannonball itself gets rammed in, followed by another wad. The cannon is then 'run out', meaning you heave it on the gun tackles until the front of the gun carriage is hard up against the ship's bulwark with the barrel going out of the gun port. It is extremely heavy, so it will take quite the effort."

"Then you fill the breech with a finer gunpowder, and you light it. Kaboom, and all that."

He grinned. "Hope you paid attention. There's a ship off the starboard bow filled with unicorn-murdering lizardmen. Probably should start firing at their ship before they get close enough to board, don't you think? Get to it."

He clapped his hand against the base of his hook. "Chop chop."

Apparently they were expected to try and be able to follow that procedure after one vague lecture.

[ooc: OCD first, plz Up and running! Procedure for fire lifted almost word-for-word from Wiki.]